Dinosaurs Suffered From Cancer

 

 Dinosaurs Suffered From Cancer

Dinosaurs may have also suffered from cancer — scientists discover fossil with diseased bone.

In 76 to 77 millon years ago,Scientists from Canada's Royal Ontario Museum and McMaster University have identified a malignant bone cancer in the fibula of a Centrosaura apertus fossil. The plant eating,single horned dinosaur ,which roamed the Earth and was diagnosed with osteosarcoma,for the first timr everin a dinosaur .

The deformed bone was originally thought to represent a healing fracture.However ,a re-evaluation of the bone revealed unmistakable signs of advanced bone cancer ,although scientists say that this particular dinosaur did not die from the cancer .

In most cases,paleontologists are at least 66 million years too late to give dinosaurs medical exams .The living animals perished long ,long ago.But every now and then ,fossil hunters uncover a bone with signs of injury or disease what experts call pathologies. And in the case of a particular bone found in the roughly 75 million years old rock of Alberta ,a medical examination has revealed that dinosaurs suffered from a cancer that afflicts humans today .

🟄The fibula was originally discovered in 1989,though at the time scientists beleived the damaged bone had been fractured.

🟄The study shows how modern techniques can help scientists learn about the ancient origins of diseases .

🟄After reanalyzing the bone, and comparing it with fibulas from a human and another dinosaur ,a team of scientists confirmed that the dinosaur suffered from the bone cancer osteosarcoma .

In the end ,the experts arrived at a diagnosis of asteosarcoma a malignant bone cancer that afflicts about 3.4  out of every million people worldwide. A multidisciplinary team led by a paleontologist and a pathologist studied the bone inside and out , examining everything from the outside shape to the inner microscope structure.

After seeing the fossil at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in Alberta in 2017 ,David Evans,the James and Louise Temerty endowed chair of vertebrate paleontology at the Royal Ontario Museum ,and his colleagues suspected the damaged was caused by a malignant tumor . 

The importance of re-evaluating existing fssil specimens with new technologies to enable scientists to draw links between human disease and those of the past that research highlights . The fossil was found in a massive bonebad ,suggesting that this dinosaur herd was struck down by a flood .

Discovering osteosarcoma in a dinosaur has implications for the evolutionary origins and history of cancer."If humans and dinosaur get the same kinds of bone cancer ,"says George Washington University paleontologist Catherine Forester,"then bone cancers developed deep in evolutionary history,before the mammal and reptile lineages split 300 million years ago."

The team's new study,published in past The Lancet ,provides the most detailed evidence yet for cancer in a dinosaur .  

Doctors diagnose advanced cancer in a dinosaur :

Scientists, including paleontologists, pathologists, a surgeon, and a radiologist, examined the full fossil with high-resolution computerized tomography scans and examined thin sections under the microscope to evaluate the structure of the cells. They found that the tumor was advanced enough that it had probably plagued the animal for some time. A similar case in a human, left untreated, would likely be fatal, they write. However, because the fossil was found in a bone bed with lots of other Centrosaurus specimens, the dinosaur likely died in a flood with the rest of its herd and not from the cancer.

This isn’t the first time cancer has been found in fossil remains. Scientists have identified benign tumors in Tyrannosaurus rex fossils and arthritis in duck-billed hadrosaurs, as well as an osteosarcoma in a 240-million-year-old turtle. But the researchers say their study is the first to confirm a dinosaur cancer diagnosis at the cellular level.

The researchers say their diagnosis shows a more careful look at unusual fossil malformations using modern imaging and diagnostic techniques can pay off, leading to new insights about the evolutionary origins of diseases.