The cancer diagnosis came 240 million. years too late

the Patient have certainly not been known, in which the pain in the hip came from.

Or why its left leg stopped working.

the Diagnosis came also the first 240 million. years later, when a thigh bone from a skjoldløs turtle, appeared in an ancient dried-up lake in Germany. The one side of the bone was destroyed by a knogletumor.

the thigh bone, which belonged to a 240 million-year-old Pappochelys, an ancestor of the turtle, is the oldest known case of cancer in an amniote, a group that includes reptiles, birds and mammals. It writes The New York Times.

Modern cancers are diagnosed, often through soft vævsundersøgelser or biopsies, but it is difficult to find for kræftjægere, working with cold, hard fossils. It requires luck. the

'When it comes to our understanding of cancer in the past, we are really just at the beginning', says Michaela Binder, a bioarkæolog by the austrian archaeological institute, who has studied cancer in ancient people.

'It is not the case that people say: Oh, I want to study cancer in the old turtles or in the fossil mammoths, because we have so little evidence',she says.

the Discovery of the femur was also a stroke of pure luck.

It was originally collected by Rainer Schoch from the Stuttgart Natural history state museum, and the thigh bone belonged to a large, long-tailed animal called Pappochelys, a relative of the turtle, however, without the shield. the

Yara Haridy, a former doctor and palaeontologist at the natural history museum in Berlin became aware of the femur, and the strange growth. the

While many paleontologists look for the cleanest - or at least most representative residues, mrs Haridy said that the marks left by illness and injury, can also shed light on the mature animal life.

the Study of such fossils is called palæopatologi, and it combines aspects of modern forensic and medical practices. the

- I'm going basically through a elimineringsproces, which also is a kind of diagnostics that is used with people,' said mrs Haridy.

You go from the most general diagnosis for more specific and really weird diagnoses.