Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/08/04/doctors-diagnose-cancer-in-din.html
…
I don’t think they’re gonna make it.
13 Likes
Well dammit there goes my billion dollar book, “Dinosaurs Don’t Get Cancer”
8 Likes
The Far Side was right:
33 Likes
This aligns with that I’ve thought for decades. It seems like every time scientists found a fossil that was shaped a little differently, they would declare it a new species. And I kept wondering, “But what if the critter was just deformed?” No telling how many dinosaurs are thought of as new “species” and the reason they were different was because of accidents or birth defects.
3 Likes
I mean, that’s still factually accurate.
2 Likes
Came here for this, was not disappointed.
6 Likes
“They told me I was wasting my time when I double-majored in paleontology and oncology, but who’s laughing now?”
9 Likes
The best kind of accurate!
3 Likes
The flood that that killed the herd: was it just a ordinary flood or The Flood?
Regardless, they wouldn’t have made a good animal model for cancer research. The feed costs alone would be prohibitive.
1 Like
1 Like
Well, hell, this just goes to show that cancer has always been a problem on Earth.
Oh, and as long as we’re here:
[edit] Found a better gif link.
3 Likes
Perhaps humanity made it even worse, what with all the digging up and burning fossil fuels for the last century+ or so…
4 Likes
Not to mention the billions of tons of the millions of chemicals and their reaction and degradation products we’ve dumped everywhere.
1 Like
UV and gamma ray exposure was supposedly worse back then?
2 Likes
I’m not a scientist, but that doesn’t seem right. Wouldn’t the ozone layer have been much “thicker” back in the dino days before we humans came along?
(Admittedly I don’t know jack about gamma ray exposure, outside of the misinfo in Hulk comics.)
2 Likes
UV-b is what makes it through when it’s cloudy.
2 Likes
Reminds me of the time my physician brother and I took my son to the Field Museum in Chicago. We were looking at the T-Rex skeleton named “Sue”, and my brother announced that she had arthritis in her knees.
1 Like
gout, too
https://www.nature.com/articles/387357a0.pdf?origin=ppub
Gout is a metabolic disorder in which urate crystals accumulate as space- occupying masses, producing monarticular spheroidal erosions in bone, often associ- ated with new bone growth at their borders1- 3• We now report the first identifi- cation of such lesions in dinosaurs. Carica- tures of the agony and ill-temper of those afflicted with gout are magnified by its recognition in Tyrannosaurus rex.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
