Dinosaur Diagnosed With Malignant Cancer for the First Time – Cancerous Bone From 77 Million Years Ago - SciTechDaily

By Royal Ontario Museum.

Courtesy of Royal Ontario Museum.

© Royal Ontario Museum/McMaster University.

Royal Ontario Museum and McMaster University researchers diagnose osteosarcoma in a Centrosaurus apertus.

A collaboration led by the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and McMaster University has led to the discovery and diagnosis of an aggressive malignant bone cancer — an osteosarcoma — for the first time ever in a dinosaur.

The cancerous bone in question is the fibula (lower leg bone) from Centrosaurus apertus, a horned dinosaur that lived 76 to 77 million years ago.

Noting the unusual properties of the bone on a trip to the Royal Tyrrell Museum in 2017, Dr.

“Diagnosis of aggressive cancer like this in dinosaurs has been elusive and requires medical expertise and multiple levels of analysis to properly identify,” says Crowther, who is also a Royal Patrons Circle donor and volunteer at the ROM.

“Here, we show the unmistakable signature of advanced bone cancer in 76-million-year-old horned dinosaur — the first of its kind.

To confirm this diagnosis, they then compared the fossil to a normal fibula from a dinosaur of the same species, as well as to a human fibula with a confirmed case of osteosarcoma.

The fossil specimen is from an adult dinosaur with an advanced stage of cancer that may have invaded other body systems.

Comparison between thin sections of the cancerous shin bone (left) and normal shin bone of the horned dinosaur Centrosaurus apertus.

Credit: Courtesy of Royal Ontario Museum.

© Royal Ontario Museum/McMaster University.

“The shin bone shows aggressive cancer at an advanced stage.

The cancer would have had crippling effects on the individual and made it very vulnerable to the formidable tyrannosaur predators of the time,” says Evans, an expert on these horned dinosaurs.

Reference: “First case of osteosarcoma in a dinosaur: a multimodal diagnosis” by Seper Ekhtiari, Kentaro Chiba, Snezana Popovic, Rhianne Crowther, Gregory Wohl, Andy Kin On Wong, Darren H Tanke, Danielle M Dufault, Olivia D Geen, Naveen Parasu, Mark A Crowther and David C Evans, August 2020, The Lancet Oncology