We tend to conceive the Cancer as a modern disease, which had little representation in the past. Focusing on human beings, this is a wrong idea. In fact, the oldest known case dates back to the year 1,200 BC. The reason why only a few cases were documented centuries or millennia ago, on the one hand, because it was not known and, on the other, because life expectancy was much shorter and, although tumors can also appear in children and adults Young, most died before the age at which most of them develop. All of this refers to humans. Fossil cases have also been documented in animals. But never one like the one just described in The Lancet Oncology a team of scientists from the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and the McMaster University: the first dinosaur fossil with cancer.
In fact, the fossil in question was found in the 80s, but at the time it was thought that the bone malformations were due to the repair of a fracture. Now a much more exhaustive study shows that it was actually a osteosarcoma. It is a very important finding, not only because it is the first of its kind, but also because it can provide very interesting information to study the evolution of this terrible disease, both in extinct species and in humans themselves.
The late diagnosis of a dinosaur with cancer
The fossil on which this study has focused comes from the fibula bone of a herbivorous dinosaur of the species Torosaurus, about 76 million years old.
It was found in 1989, in the Dinosaur Provincial Park en Alberta, in a massive bed of bones. Since then, it had become part of the collection of the Museo Royal Tyrrell, where no peculiarity that made it special was registered.
However, during an excursion to this center, the authors of this new study found that the malformation was not typical of a closed fracture. There was something else. But what could it be?
To answer this question, they brought together a multidisciplinary team of scientists and doctors, which included professionals from radiology, pathology, orthopedic surgery and paleopathology.
The fossil had to be subjected to a series of tests, which ranged from the computed tomography up the analysis to a 3D microscope. In this way they could find the signs of the progression of osteosarcoma through the bone and make the definitive diagnosis of the cancer diagnosis.
An easy victim for him T.rex
The study also shows that, possibly, the tumor expanded by other bones of the animal. It is not easy to know, since the fibula was found with the remains of many other specimens of its species, possibly fleeing in droves when they were hit by floods.
The authors also point out that this dinosaur with cancer would be an easy victim for predators like T. rex. However, the fact that he lived in herd with other animals she was able to keep him alive longer, until fatality took them all at once.
Now, at least, his remains have become a jewel of paleontology for two reasons. On the one hand, they indicate that, perhaps, many fossils exposed in museums hide signs of diseases that have not been known to investigate. On the other hand, it provides very interesting information on the evolution of cancer, something that is not only useful in dinosaur research. It is also for the study of human tumors.
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