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Science Quickly

Dinosaurs Got Cancer, Too

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.2639 Ratings

🗓️ 28 September 2020

⏱️ 4 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Researchers seeking evidence for cancer in dinosaurs found it in a collection of bones at a paleontology museum in Alberta. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

0:05.8

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years.

0:11.0

Yacold also partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for gut health, an investigator-led research program.

0:19.6

To learn more about Yachtolt, visit yawcult.co.

0:22.7

.jp. That's Y-A-K-U-L-T.C-O.J-P. When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacult.

0:33.9

This is Scientific American 60-second science. I'm Emily Schweng.

0:39.6

Given that hundreds of thousands of dinosaur bones have been dug up, is there any evidence that dinosaurs got cancer?

0:47.1

David Evans, senior curator of paleontology at the Royal Museum of Ontario and Toronto.

0:53.3

There had been a few studies that had kind of suggested based on just like gross anatomy

1:00.0

that dinosaurs might have gotten cancer.

1:02.0

But there was nothing compelling from a medical standpoint.

1:07.0

And from that point on, we decided to go on a hunt for rare dinosaur diseases, in particular cancer.

1:13.4

So in 2017, Evans and colleagues went digging through a collection of dinosaur bones at the Royal Tyrell Museum of Paleontology in Alberta, a hotbed of dinosaur fossils.

1:24.6

And out of the hundreds of dinosaur bones that we looked at, we found one that

1:30.3

was a candidate for bone cancer. The bone specimen evidence and his colleagues found comes from a

1:36.1

dinosaur that roamed Western Canada between 70 and 75 million years ago. The creatures called a

1:43.5

centrosaurus.

1:44.9

Centrosaurus is a horn dinosaur.

1:47.5

It's about the size of a rhinoceros.

1:50.9

And it's a close cousin of the famous triceratops.

1:55.0

So it looked very similar.

1:57.2

It would have had a parrot-like beak at the end of its large skull, had a neck shield similar to

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