Scientists in Canada have diagnosed malignant cancer for the first time in a dinosaur, a Centrosaurus apertus from 76 to 77 million years ago.
Scientists from Canada's Royal Ontario Museum and McMaster University say they have identified malignant bone cancer in a dinosaur for the first time.
Osteosarcoma — an aggressive bone cancer — in the fibula, or lower leg bone, of a Centrosaurus apertus, a plant-eating, single-horned dinosaur that lived 76 to 77 million years ago.
"What this study shows, because we found bone cancer at quite an advanced stage, is that dinosaurs were not only afflicted by bone cancer but probably all sorts of other cancers that we see in invertebrates today," says David Evans, a paleontologist at the Royal Ontario Museum and one of the study's lead researchers.
"We basically went on a hunt for dinosaur cancer," Evans says.
Two views of the Centrosaurus apertus shin bone (fibula) with malignant bone cancer (osteosarcoma).
While this is the first identified instance of osteosarcoma in a dinosaur, Ekhtiari says it makes sense that a cancer associated with rapid bone growth would have plagued the dinosaurs.