Dinosaurs got cancer, bone analysis reveals

DINOSAURS suffered from cancer, according to new research that indicates the disease is fundamental to the animal kingdom.

Scientists claim to have discovered the first case of an aggressive malignant bone cancer – known as an osteosarcoma – in a planteating dinosaur fossil.

The findings have been published in The Lancet Oncology medical journal.

The cancerous bone was the fibula – lower leg bone – from Centrosaurus apertus, a horned dinosaur that lived up to 76million years ago in present day Canada.

Originally discovered in Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta in 1989, the badly malformed fossil was first thought to be a healing fracture. Noting the unusual properties of the bone on a trip to the Royal Tyrrell Museum in 2017, Dr David Evans, of the Royal Ontario Museum, and Prof Mark Crowther and Snezana Popovic, an osteopathologist, both of Mcmaster University, decided to investigate.

Prof Crowther said: “Diagnosis of aggressive cancer like this in dinosaurs has been elusive and requires medical expertise and multiple levels of analysis to properly identify.

“Here, we show the unmistakable signature of advanced bone cancer in a 76-million-year-old horned dinosaur – the first of its kind. It’s very exciting.”

The fossil specimen is from an adult dinosaur with an advanced stage of cancer.

Yet it was found in a massive “bonebed”, suggesting it died as part of a large herd of Centrosaurus that was struck down by a flood.