Possible case of partial postmortem fetal extrusion : preliminary observations on the mummified remains of a turnof-the-19th-century noblewoman in Finland
Väre, Tiina; Lipkin, Sanna; Kallio-Seppä, Titta; Tranberg, Annemari; Junno, Juho-Antti (2021-07-02)
Väre, T., Lipkin, S., Kallio-Seppä, T., Tranberg, A., & Junno, J.-A. (2021). Possible case of partial postmortem fetal extrusion: Preliminary observations on the mummified remains of a turn-of-the-19th-century noblewoman in Finland. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, 31(6), 1280–1284. https://doi.org/10.1002/oa.3023
© 2021 The Authors. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe202201219688
Tiivistelmä
Abstract
We report a plausible case of partial postmortem fetal extrusion dating to the turn of the 19th century. A fetal skull protruded from the obstetric canal of the partially mummified remains of an adult woman buried in a private burial chapel in Vihti, South Finland. The fetal size implies the mother having died during the early third trimester of her pregnancy. The cause of death was not obvious from the limited external examination of her remains, but the underdeveloped state of the fetal remains renders it unlikely that this case represents a maternal death resulting from dystocia. Rather, the finding should be interpreted as a case of partial postmortem fetal extrusion, a process probably interrupted by decelerated decomposition of the maternal remains before full expulsion of the fetus.
Kokoelmat
- Avoin saatavuus [31657]