Лондон
пасмурно
12
°
C
13
°
10.7
°
83 %
3kmh
99 %
Вт
16
°
Ср
17
°
Чт
20
°
Пт
18
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Сб
11
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Dinosaurs had respiratory diseases
Paleontologists have described an infectious lesion of the air sacs in a young sauropod that lived about 150 million years ago. The disease was most likely caused by bacteria or fungi. As noted in an article for the journal Scientific Reports, air sac infections often affect modern birds, but non-bird dinosaurs have not yet been so diagnosed.
Evidence of infections and other diseases is poorly preserved in the fossil record. Nevertheless, paleontologists sometimes manage to diagnose representatives of species that went extinct millions of years ago. For example, specialists recently for the first time identified cancer in a non-bird dinosaur and, a few years before that, infectious arthritis. In addition, there are numerous examples of parasitic infections from which extinct animals suffered. You can read more about them in our article "Passenger from the Mesozoic".
A team of paleontologists led by D. Cary Woodruff of the Great Plains Dinosaur Museum has demonstrated that non-bird dinosaurs faced another group of diseases. The researchers focused on the remains of an immature sauropod from the Diplodocinae clade, 156.3-146.8 million years old, found on the Late Jurassic Morrison Formation in Montana. The specimen, tentatively named MOR 7029, was collected in several stages: a skull and seven articulated cervical vertebrae were discovered in 1990, and additional postcranial skeletal elements were found in 2013-2015.
On close inspection of the remains of MOR 7029, Woodruff and colleagues noticed evidence of an unusual pathology. On the surface of the air cavities (the sauropods had air sacs inside them, similar to those found in modern birds) of the fifth to seventh cervical vertebrae, the bone tissue strongly overgrew, forming a wavy and heterogeneous texture. The largest focus of overgrowth arose in the left ventral cavity of the fifth cervical vertebra. Its dimensions were 2.8 centimeters in the head-to-tail direction and 2.1 centimeters in the dorsoventral direction. At the same time, the height of the outgrowths deep into the cavities varies from half a centimeter to a centimeter.
Using computed tomography, the researchers also identified numerous defects within the affected vertebrae. These are mainly small cavities of ovoid, tubular and angular shape. They are unevenly distributed throughout the vertebrae and are more concentrated around foci of bone overgrowth. These signs indicate serious deviations from the normal pneumatization of the vertebrae. In modern species, similar problems occur with chronic disease.
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