Researchers have discovered two dissimilar type of benignant tumors on a single vertebra from a mammoth , long - necked , plant - eating titanosaur that lived in what ’s now southeastern Brazil . The findings are published in the new issue ofCretaceous Research .
Unlike infections or traumatic lesions , evidence of neoplasms ( or neoplasm ) , either malignant or benign , are extremely rare in the fossils of vertebrate brute . And in dinosaur , they ’ve only ever been come up in just one single family : the hadrosaurids , or the duck’s egg - placard dinosaur . However , recent work on dinosaurs from the Upper Cretaceous of Argentina and Brazil – Mapusaurusand a titanosaur calledUberabatitan riberoi , respectively – suggest that this pathological circumstance is more far-flung than research worker antecedently suspect .
Now , a squad led by Fernando Henrique de Souza Barbosa ofUniversidade Federal do Rio de Janeiroreport the first case of document neoplasia in a non - hadrosaur dinosaur . They studied a specimen called UFRJ - DG 508 - gas constant go back from Late Cretaceous John Rock in the Adamantina Formation in the Alfredo Marcondes municipality of State of São Paulo . The taillike vertebral centrum ( part of the tailbone ) do from a member of the Titanosauridae kinfolk , though it ’s not possible to identify the animal down to the specie floor .
The vertebra had an stranded little , bony , button - determine protuberance that measures 8.6 by 7.5 millimeters ( about 0.3 by 0.3 inches ) , and it occupies a 50.03 - square - millimeter area corresponding to 5.45 percentage of the control surface where joint occurs . After a serial of examinations and CT scanning , the squad found two different type of neoplasia in the vertebra : osteoma and hemangioma . An osteoma is a benignant , slow - growing , osseous tissue - forming tumor , and a hemangioma is a benign vascular tumor . Because of their location and sizing , these tumors credibly did n’t affect the dinosaur much .
The old account subject of an osteoma was found in an Early Carboniferous Pisces calledPhanerosteon mirabilefrom North America some 300 million twelvemonth ago , and other composition of osteoma admit an Upper Cretaceous mosasaur from the U.S. , a croc from the Paleocene , and a heavyweight from the Lower Pliocene of Chile . Meanwhile , hemangiomas have been found in duck’s egg - placard dinos calledBrachylophosaurus , Gilmoreosaurus , Bactrosaurus , andEdmontosaurus . This report is the first time the presence of both osteoma and hemangioma was detected in a single specimen .
