Around 80 million years ago in what is now Brazil, a sick dinosaur limped along—but its days were numbered. Its leg bone was so diseased that it had turned spongy, and a particularly gruesome culprit may have been to blame: wormlike parasites wriggling through its bloodstream. Researchers analyzing the fossilized bone recently found strange, oblong forms in channels that once were blood vessels. The dinosaur in question was a titanosaur, a gigantic long-necked animal with legs the size of tree trunks.
After initially noticing abnormalities in the leg bone, Aline Ghilardi at Brazil’s Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, along with her colleagues, set out to discover what ailed the titanosaur. They ruled out cancer and tuberculosis; these often reduce blood flow in affected bone areas, but this fossil’s irregular surface suggested it had once been riddled with vascular canals coursing with blood and pus. A CT scan also revealed internal cavities probably associated with blood flow.
The researchers concluded that this titanosaur had a rare bone condition called osteomyelitis, which causes severe inflammation. When they cut thin slices of the fossil, coated
— source scientificamerican.com | Chris Baraniuk | Oct 30, 2020