Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of spinal development on the compressive mechanics of the cervical spine. Animal models were used due to the lack of human tissue in the pediatric range. Spinal column maturation resulted in increasing ultimate failure load with the lower cervical spine carrying the lowest loads of failure. The data proves that spinal compressive tolerance is directly related to maturation and through scaling these data may provide tolerance values applicable to anthropomorphic test dummies and computational models aimed at injury prevention for the pediatric occupant.