Researchers on Monday announced the discovery and diagnosis of an aggressive type of bone cancer in a dinosaur, making it the first known example of a dinosaur afflicted by malignant cancer, according to a study.
The cancer was found in the leg bone of a Centrosaurus, a horned dinosaur that lived 76 to 77 million years ago. Its fossils were previously unearthed in the badlands of Dinosaur Provincial Park in Canada’s Alberta province back in 1989, where scientists spotted a badly malformed leg bone they believed to be a healed fracture.
A team of researchers, including David Evans of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and Mark Crowther a hematologist at McMaster University, re-evaluated the bone and determined it was actually osteosarcoma, an aggressive type of bone cancer, according to a study published the journal Lancet Oncology.
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