fetalizationn.

1819 D. Pring Gen. Indications Laws Org. Life 91 At this period of fœtalization, which might be called the uterine period, it is our present business to say what are the agents which maintain the living condition, and the enumeration will not be tedious.

1926 Lancet 19 June 1201/1 Congenital transmission dealt with any infection which occurred to the fœtus from the moment of fœtalisation to birth.

1922 Internat. Med. & Surg. Surv. 4 No. 1. i. 767 Somatically, man represents the mature fetal stage of the primates. The human form results from a ‘fetalization’ process.

1927 Q. Rev. Biol. 2 452/1 He [sc. L. Bolk] develops the thesis that the human form is the resultant of a progressive evolutionary ‘fetalization’, the causal factors for which are to be found in the endocrine system.

1957 L. Eiseley Immense Journey 130 ‘Foetalization’ or ‘pedomorphism’, as it is termed, means simply the retention, into adult life, of bodily characters which at some earlier stage of evolutionary history were actually only infantile.

2010 Seminars Cell & Developmental Biol. 21 442/1 However, Bolk's ‘fetalization hypothesis’ set the stage for all subsequent comparative ontogenetic analyses by providing a long list of human ‘fetal’ and/or ‘delayed’ features.