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Duck-Billed Dinosaurs Suffered From Cancer
Polyploid Pimp writes "Nature reports a study by Bruce Rothschild of NEOUCOM about cancer in dinosaurs. Rothschild's group X-rayed 10,000 bones of over 700 museum specimens across North America. They found that only one group, the hadrosaurs or duck-billed dinosaurs got cancer. They hypothesize the cancer may be due to the dinosaurs presumed diet of conifers, which contain a number of known carcinogens. Additionally, this group of dinosaurs is thought (by some people) to have been warm blooded, which may have increased their cancer risk. They cite as support for conducting their study that understanding the causes and rates of cancer in other animals may provide insight into human cancers. I find it an interesting story as it demonstrates another use for museum specimens outside of their original collection purposes, and represents (to me at least) one reason to keep funding them, since you never know how the material may be used in the future."
Come on, everybody knows dinosaurs got cancer from smoking. Duh.
1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.
X-raying bones the way this guy does on the picture doesn't seem very safe to me. In hospitals, X-ray operations are protected by leaded windows or aprons (sp?)... Studying dinos causes cancer ;-)
When someone dies from cancer, it's usually because the cancer has spread all over the body, so what may have started out as skin cancer can be found in places like bones.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.