Scientists discover tumor in 240 million year old ancestor of the turtle

Science & Planet Scientists found a tumor in the Pappochelys rosina, the schildloze ancestor of the modern turtle, as stated in the scientific journal JAMA Oncology to read. “The animal that about 240 million years ago, had a form of bone cancer,” says Yara Haridy, palaeontologist of the Natural history Museum in Berlin and head of the research team that the discovery did.

Paleontologists have found in 2008 about twenty fossils of the Pappochelys rosina in a limestone quarry at about 80 km from the German city of Stuttgart. The fossils have since been preserved in the Natural history museum of Stuttgart, where scientists examined how the ancestor of the modern turtle is developed.

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During one of the investigations last summer, noted paleontologist Yara Haridy, however, something strange. The fossil of a bone from one of the hind legs of the animal had a bizarre fusion. “I originally thought it was a poorly healed fracture. That is after all more common in paleontology, but after consultation with my colleagues, I found that there really is more to the hand”.

Haridy contacted Patrick Asbach, a physician and radiologist at the Charité University of Medicine in Berlin, which is a micro-CT scan, you took the fossil. From the results of the scan showed that “the stranger " ” a tumor was. “The ancestor of the turtle was so affected by bone cancer,” says Asbach.