ArticleScientific reports2020
A comprehensive diagnostic approach combining phylogenetic disease bracketing and CT imaging reveals osteomyelitis in a Tyrannosaurus rex.
Article in Scientific reports, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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10 citing papers in PubMed, 20 citations in OpenAlex.
- Skeletal pathologies in extant crocodilians as a window into the paleopathology of fossil archosaurs.Anatomical record (Hoboken, N.J. : 2007) · 2026Article
- Paleopathology of a Lower Miocene Carettochelyid Turtle from the Moghra Formation, Egypt.Biology · 2026Article
- Several occurrences of osteomyelitis in dinosaurs from a site in the Bauru Group, Cretaceous of Southeast Brazil.Anatomical record (Hoboken, N.J. : 2007) · 2026Article
- A case report of a pathology in the 'whip' of a flagellicaudatan sauropod.Die Naturwissenschaften · 2026Article
- Bony injuries in a Late Triassic forerunner of mammals from Brazil.Die Naturwissenschaften · 2025Article
- Histological analysis and etiology of a pathological iguanodontian femur from England.Journal of anatomy · 2024Article
- New information on paleopathologies in non-avian theropod dinosaurs: a case study on South American abelisaurids.BMC ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Quantitative dual-energy CT as a nondestructive tool to identify indicators for fossilized bone in vertebrate paleontology.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- A new styracosternan hadrosauroid (Dinosauria: Ornithischia) from the Early Cretaceous of Portell, Spain.PloS one · 2021Article
- Novel report of an osteogenic tumor in a late Jurassic Mamenchisaurid from Thailand.Journal of anatomyArticle
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8 authors at 5 institutions in 2 countries.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Traditional palaeontological techniques of disease characterisation are limited to the analysis of osseous fossils, requiring several lines of evidence to support diagnoses. This study presents a novel stepwise concept for comprehensive diagnosis of pathologies in fossils by computed tomography imaging for morphological assessment combined with likelihood estimation based on systematic phylogenetic disease bracketing. This approach was applied to characterise pathologies of the left fibula and fused caudal vertebrae of the non-avian dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex. Initial morphological assessment narrowed the differential diagnosis to neoplasia or infection. Subsequent data review from phylogenetically closely related species at the clade level revealed neoplasia rates as low as 3.1% and 1.8%, while infectious-disease rates were 32.0% and 53.9% in extant dinosaurs (birds) and non-avian reptiles, respectively. Furthermore, the survey of literature revealed that within the phylogenetic disease bracket the oldest case of bone infection (osteomyelitis) was identified in the mandible of a 275-million-year-old captorhinid eureptile Labidosaurus. These findings demonstrate low probability of a neoplastic aetiology of the examined pathologies in the Tyrannosaurus rex and in turn, suggest that they correspond to multiple foci of osteomyelitis.
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