Deadly dinosaur cancer found, according to reports in Science (AAAS) News, ScienceDaily and Smithsonian Magazine 3 August 2020, and The Lancet Onlcology, August 2020 doi: 10.1016/S1470-2045(20)30171-6.
A group of scientists, including palaeontologists, pathologists, an orthopaedic surgeon, and a radiologist have studied a deformed bone found in the Dinosaur Park deposit in Alberta, Canada. The bone is a leg bone from a Centrosaurus – a horned, plant eating dinosaur dated as 76 million years old. The deformity had been thought to be a badly healed fracture, but the new study, which included x-rays and microscopic examination revealed it to be an osteosarcoma – a malignant cancer of bone.
The tumour was quite extensive indicating the dinosaur has suffered with it for a long period of time, and it may have spread to other parts of the body, such as the lungs, as commonly happens with malignant tumours. However, the dinosaur did not die from the cancer. The bone was found in an extensive bed of dinosaurs that are officially described as having been killed in a flood.
Catherine Forster a palaeontologist at George Washington University commented: “If humans and dinosaurs get the same kinds of bone cancers, then bone cancers developed deep in evolutionary history, before the mammal and reptile lineages split 300 million years ago”.
David Evans, a palaeontologist at Royal Ontario Museum, where the bone is kept, commented: “Dinosaurs can seem like mythical creatures, but they were living, breathing animals that suffered through horrible injuries and diseases, and this discovery certainly makes them more real and helps bring them to life in that respect”.
Links: Science, ScienceDaily, Smithsonian
Editorial Comment: Osteosarcoma is a rare but deadly cancer that also occurs in humans, and will kill them if not treated. This editor has seen several cases in my medical experience– all particularly tragic because they occurred in young people.
The study described above reveals a double disaster – a deadly disease and sudden death in a flood. It was no small flood either. The diseased bone was part of a massive fossil bed containing flood mixed fish, lizards, crocodiles, turtles and plants as well as the many dinosaur skeletons.
Let’s be honest any cancer ridden dinosaur was not having it very good, plus getting drowned in the bargain. Both life and death were not very good for this dinosaur, or for all the other animals also wiped out in this flood fossil bed. Furthermore, this is not the only example of diseases in dinosaurs. Dinosaur bones have been found showing signs of infection, arthritis and other tumours – not as deadly as osteosarcoma, but certainly a cause of pain and disability.
Charles Darwin was offended by the idea that God would use millions of years of evolutionary struggle to create. He wrote in his autobiography:
“A being so powerful and so full of knowledge as a God who could create the universe, is to our finite minds omnipotent and omniscient, and it revolts our understanding to suppose that his benevolence is not unbounded, for what advantage can there be in the sufferings of millions of the lower animals throughout almost endless time?” Nora Barlow, ed. The autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809-1882: with original omissions restored. New York, W.W. Norton, 1969, p90.
Sadly, Darwin chose to stand by his theory, and reject the true God and only Saviour of mankind, as revealed in the Bible.
Add that to the fact that the finding of animals “that suffered through horrible injuries and disease” is a huge rebuke to any theologians who claim the fossil records show millions of years of evolution, guided by God, prior to an evolving ‘creation’ of human beings. The real Creator God not only completed the world and all that was in it, in addition He declared it to be “very good” (Genesis 1:31). So just ask any cancer sufferer how good they find their killer cancer.
Theologians who claim God used millions of years of death, disease and struggle before creating human beings, are reminded that the same God who judged the world at the time of Noah’s Flood will also judge their work. He will not be pleased by those who claim He deliberately created disease and death and declared it to be very good.
Creation Research News
19 August 2020