Canadian scientists discovered for the first time that dinosaurs had cancer, as no tumors that could spread throughout the body and have serious health effects in dinosaurs had not been documented before, according to research published in The Lancet Oncology on August 3. This August.
A collaboration led by the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and McMaster University in Canada led to the discovery and diagnosis of bone cancer "osteosarcoma" in dinosaurs of the family, "Centrosaurus apertus," a dinosaur with horns that lived during the period 76 years ago. To 77 million years.
The dinosaur bone, which was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, was discovered in 1989 in the Canadian province of Alberta, and experts initially believed that the bone, which appeared to be deformed, was the result of a healing fracture.
Reassessment and analysis
On a trip to the Royal Tyrrell Museum in 2017, the unusual properties of bone were observed, so a team of scientists decided to investigate the matter further, and a team of specialists and medical professionals was assembled in fields including pathology, radiology, orthopedics, and pathology. Old.
The team re-evaluated the bone by conducting a more detailed analysis using the same modern techniques that are used in human diagnosis, including microscopy and high-resolution CT scans. It was discovered that the dinosaur was suffering from bone sarcoma, a bone cancer that affects humans in the second or third decade. Of their lives.
"Diagnosing an aggressive cancer like this in dinosaurs was far-fetched and required medical expertise and multiple levels of analysis to correctly identify it," says Mark Crowther, professor of pathology and molecular medicine at McMaster University.
To confirm this diagnosis, the team then compared the fossil to a normal fragment of a dinosaur of the same species, as well as a human fragment of a teenager with a confirmed case of osteosarcoma.
Devastating disease
Although the fossil sample of an adult dinosaur indicates that it has an advanced stage of cancer and that it may have invaded other body systems, researchers believe that the cause of the centrosaur's death was not cancer, but rather a flood that killed the entire herd that was among it, as evidenced by His leg bone was found among hundreds of other dinosaur bones.
"The shin bone shows aggressive cancer at an advanced stage," says David Evans, co-author of the study, of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and an expert on these horned dinosaurs. The cancer could have had disabling effects on an individual and rendered him highly vulnerable to the formidable tyrannosaurs predators at the time. ".
"The fact that this plant-eating dinosaur lived in a large, protective herd may have allowed it to survive longer than usual with such a devastating disease," Evans adds.
Osteosarcoma is a bone cancer that causes an overgrowth of irregular bone that spreads rapidly through the bone in which it arose, and is most common to other organs, including the lung.
“It's wonderful and inspiring to see a similar multidisciplinary effort we are using in diagnosing and treating osteosarcoma in our patients that may lead to the first diagnosis of osteosarcoma in dinosaurs,” says Saber Akhtari, "McMaster's resident orthopedic surgeon and co-author of the study."
Greater understanding of diseases
This study originally aimed to set a new standard for diagnosing diseases that are not apparent in dinosaur fossils, and it opens the door to more accurate and more certain diagnoses.
Establishing links between human diseases and diseases of the past will also help scientists gain a better understanding of the genetic evolution of different diseases.
Evidence of many other diseases - which we share with dinosaurs and extinct animals - may be found in museums and just need to be reexamined with modern analysis techniques.