Friday 23 March 2018

The doctor can see you now.

Dinosaur Diagnosed 200 Million Years Too Late

This article describes the use of digital imaging on the ribs of a herbivorous dinosaur, Lufengosaurus huenei, found in Yunnan, China. 

The authors discovered that the beastie suffered and died from osteomyelitis - a bacterial infection of the bone marrow. And, taking into account the damage to the bone and the bones position, they reckon the damage was caused by a bite. What did the biting is not known. We can take it that we now have proof of the (unsurprising) fact that meat eating dinosaurs ate herbivorous ones.

Micro-computed tomography used to produce surface renderings of the rib in 3D (top) and 2D X-ray slices through the rib (bottom).

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