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Cancer ‘did not cause dinosaur extinction’

by Henry Scowcroft | Analysis

26 September 2007

6 comments 6 comments

Dinosaur skellingtonCancer is often regarded as a disease of modern living, caused by our high-fat, low-exercise lifestyle, too much boozing and smoking, or sinister ‘things in the environment’.

But while it’s true that our sedentary lifestyles and bad diets have changed the rates of certain types of cancer (notably lung or bowel cancer), the disease is actually as old as life itself.

References to cancer have been found in four-thousand-year-old Egyptian papyruses. Hippocrates, the “Father of Medicine”, is credited with being the first to recognise the difference between benign and malignant tumours in Greece in about 400 BC.

And signs of cancer have even been found in fossilised dinosaur bones.

Which brings us, in a round-about way, to the actual subject of this post.

Astronomers studying the depths of our universe have noticed that the amount of radiation reaching the earth has varied considerably over time, leading some to suggest that it was radiation-induced cancer that wiped out the dinosaurs all those millennia ago.

So it was interesting to read this week that this theory has been effectively disproved. US scientists looked for signs of bone cancer in the fossils of over 700 dinosaurs, and compared their results to cancer rates in modern birds and reptiles.

They found absolutely no difference, suggesting that solar radiation had no part to play in the wiping out of our illustrious reptilian forebears.

And funnily enough, their results also rule out another theory, proposed by G. Larson et al. in the mid 80s:

http://www.thefarside.com/,Copyright © 2000, 2007 FarWorks, Inc

Henry

    Comments

  • Kat
    28 September 2007

    Janet Sumner from the Open University has an interesting theory based on flood lava:
    http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/interviews/interview/738/

  • Henry
    26 September 2007

    wow.

    is there NOTHING we can’t blame on climate change?

  • Ed
    26 September 2007

    Mike, first you’d have to reference some papers to show that those were actually credible theories at some point. And, no, “Regnier, M. 2007. Drunken ramblings at the pub. Personal communication” isn’t a suitable reference.

    As to what killed the dinosaurs, the most likely scenarios are still (after many years of crazy theories) asteroid collision and climate change – mainly the first one, helped by the second one.

  • Michael
    26 September 2007

    This is all very well, but as with so much research, it doesn’t answer the initial question: just what did kill the dinosaurs? Can I publish a paper on how chocolate Rice Krispie cakes didn’t kill the dinosaurs, or how over-fishing of the North Sea didn’t wipe them out? Can I? Ooh, what if it did?

    (Nice post, though H. Made me laugh)

  • Henry
    26 September 2007

    They did during the National Anthem.

    Allegedly.

  • Ed
    26 September 2007

    And nor did any dinosaur stand in the pose shown in the skeleton, with the tail dragging on the ground…

    Comments

  • Kat
    28 September 2007

    Janet Sumner from the Open University has an interesting theory based on flood lava:
    http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/interviews/interview/738/

  • Henry
    26 September 2007

    wow.

    is there NOTHING we can’t blame on climate change?

  • Ed
    26 September 2007

    Mike, first you’d have to reference some papers to show that those were actually credible theories at some point. And, no, “Regnier, M. 2007. Drunken ramblings at the pub. Personal communication” isn’t a suitable reference.

    As to what killed the dinosaurs, the most likely scenarios are still (after many years of crazy theories) asteroid collision and climate change – mainly the first one, helped by the second one.

  • Michael
    26 September 2007

    This is all very well, but as with so much research, it doesn’t answer the initial question: just what did kill the dinosaurs? Can I publish a paper on how chocolate Rice Krispie cakes didn’t kill the dinosaurs, or how over-fishing of the North Sea didn’t wipe them out? Can I? Ooh, what if it did?

    (Nice post, though H. Made me laugh)

  • Henry
    26 September 2007

    They did during the National Anthem.

    Allegedly.

  • Ed
    26 September 2007

    And nor did any dinosaur stand in the pose shown in the skeleton, with the tail dragging on the ground…