20/02/2023
The hunt to decisively diagnose a dinosaur with bone cancer started when David Evans, a palaeontologist at the University of Toronto and a curator at the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada, met Mark Crowther, a human haematologist and chair of the faculty of medicine at McMaster University, Canada. They realised they could use their combined expertise to try to find an osteosarcoma.
Still, finding a potential case was no easy task. Pathologies on fossil specimens are often noted, but they aren't really curated – organised according to this characteristic – says Evans. Instead, bones with the hallmarks of disease are usually spread all over collections.
