Duck-billed dinosaurs had the same bone tumors as people
Studying the fossilized traces of diseases in dinosaurs can help researchers better understand how these maladies have changed over time. (Wikimedia Commons/)Scientists have identified the oldest-known case of a unique kind of cancer in the tailbones of a duck-billed dinosaur. The abnormalities preserved in the ancient reptile’s bones match those seen in people today who are afflicted with this rare disease, the researchers announced February 10 in Scientific Reports.Studying the fossilized traces of diseases in dinosaurs can shed light on how long certain maladies have existed and how they have changed over time, says Bruce Rothschild, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh and coauthor of the new study.“This is not the first tumor that has been discovered in dinosaurs, but it’s the first of this particular variety,” he says. “When they occur in the dinosaurs, they don’t look any different than they do...