1.7 million yr old toe bone fossil with cancerous growth on it!

1.7 Million-Year-Old Foot Bone Offers Earliest Evidence of Malignant Cancer

Cancer's roots lie deep in prehistory.
Swartkrans cave, a rich archaeological site, has yielded a 1.7 million-year-old foot bone with a malignant tumor -- the oldest evidence of cancer yet discovered by scientists.
Researchers identified the tumor as osteosarcoma, an aggressive bone cancer found in young people among modern adults. The ancient foot, however, did not belong to a modern adult.
Scientists believe the owner of the diseased foot was an early human relative, a bipedal hominin, but can't determine the exact species.
At the nearby site of Malapa, scientists found evidence of a benign tumor in the fossilized vertebrae of a Australopithecus sediba specimen. The vertebrae are 2 million years old.
Both discoveries -- detailed in separate papers in the South African Journal of Science -- push back the emergence of both benign and malignant cancers in the human lineage.
"Modern medicine tends to assume that cancers and tumors in humans are diseases caused by modern lifestyles and environments," Edward Odes, a doctoral candidate at the University of Witwatersrand's Evolutionary Studies Institute, said in a news release. "Our studies show the origins of these diseases occurred in our ancient relatives millions of years before modern industrial societies existed."
Previously, the earliest evidence of a hominin tumor was credited to a 120,000-year-old Neanderthal fossil.
Researchers used CT scans to diagnose and describe the two tumors.
While researchers can't say for sure whether the foot belonged to a child or adult, or whether the cancer was the cause of death, the vertebrae with the benign tumor belonged to a child.
"Not only has there been an assumption that these sorts of cancers and tumors are diseases of modernity, which these fossils clearly demonstrate they are not, but that we as modern humans exhibit them as a consequence of living longer, yet this rare tumor is found in a young child," explained Wit professor Lee Berger. "The history of these types of tumors and cancers is clearly more complex than previously thought."
http://www.sci-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=13200D3RDGR0

Syl wrote:Baffling....I think cancer has many forms, some can be treated succesfully some cannot, even when  treated sucesfully there is  always a chance it can come back more lethal than ever.....it's a horrible disease.

4Ever, do your females  have free smear and mammogram checks in the US.

**HPV Vaccine For Teens - PAMF Home
www.pamf.org/parenting-teens/health/vaccines/hpv.html
The CDC recommends HPV vaccine for young men & women to prevent cervical cancer ... cancer?" section below). Treatment ... three shots over 6 months to ...

She finally found a female doctor and she did a needle biopsy on a teeny-tiny fiberest cyst looking pebble and the results are 'CANCER' and it's MALIGNANT CANCER  

All because the Republicans FEAR NATIONAL HEALTH CARE FOR EVERYONE --- and they get the benefits that none of us do nor their extended families do    

Ben Reilly wrote:Thought I'd read somewhere that some T-rex bones were found that seemed to indicate cancer. Of course, that long ago, who can tell, but ...

Wednesday 22 October 2003
Many dinosaurs had cancer, researchers have discovered. Their tumors were like those of human patients, showing that cancer has been around for a very long time. "Diseases look the same independent of what critter is affected," says radiologist Bruce Rothschild of the Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine in Rootstown.
Rothschild's team travelled North America with a portable x-ray machine, scanning 10,000 dinosaur vertebrae from more than 700 museum specimens. They looked at dinosaurs such as the Stegosaurus, Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus.
Only one group - the Hadrosaurs, or "duck-billed dinosaurs" - suffered from cancer. The team found 29 tumors in bones from 97 individuals of this herbivorous group from the Cretaceous period, about 70m years ago. Dinosaur tumors have been mooted before, but this is the first large-scale survey of them.
It is not known for certain what gave the Hadrosaurs cancer, although Rothschild points out that they ate conifers, which are high in carcinogenic chemicals. The structure of their bones also suggests they were warm blooded, which might have increased their cancer risk.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2003/oct/23/dinosaurs.science