tests on a leg bone from a Centrosaurus, discovered in 1989 revealed that a lump the size of an apple was actually a cancerous tumor.
canadian researchers discovered the first case of cancer known at a dinosaur, according to a study published in the August issue of the scientific journal The Lancet Oncology.
A leg bone from a Centrosaurus was discovered by paleontologists in 1989 in the canadian province of Alberta. Experts thought initially that the ossement, distorted, had suffered a fracture which had healed. But recent examinations under the microscope and through the use of advanced technologies, such as computed tomography, high-resolution, revealed that a lump on the bone, of the size of an apple, was in fact a cancerous tumor.
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“The dinosaurs did not have an easy life, many of them had fractures that healed, or infections of the bones,” explains one of the authors of the study, Mark Crowther. On bones as old, “finding evidence of cancer is difficult”, he says, because most tumors develop in soft tissue, poorly preserved in the fossil record.
The detailed analysis of the bones of the herbivorous prehistoric revealed a surprise : “bizarrely, under the microscope, it looked a lot like human osteosarcoma”, a malignant tumor of bone, ” says Mark Crowther. “It is fascinating to see that this cancer existed tens of millions of years, and it still exists,” notes the researcher, who heads the faculty of medicine at McMaster university in Ontario. The tumor of this Centrosaurus, a herbivore horn, who lived there from 76 to 77 million years ago, has without doubt led to metastasis, which were limp this giant lizard, believe the authors of the study.
“cancer is not a recent invention”
however, the researchers believe that this is not the cancer that killed the Centrosaurus : the bone in his leg was found among a hundred bones apartment in the same herd, without doubt carried away by sudden disaster, like a flood.
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“The discovery of this cancer makes the dinosaurs more real,” says the author. “We often imagine them as mythical creatures, walking with a heavy and robust, but (…) they suffered from diseases like humans”. “Discovering an example dating back to 75 million years ago, one realizes that (the cancer) is a part of life,” he concludes. “You have a pet who didn’t smoke probably not, so this shows that cancer is not a recent invention, and that it is not exclusively linked to our environment.”
