The Earliest Case of Neoplastic Bone Lesion in Tetrapods

An insight into cancer palaeobiology: does the Mesozoic neoplasm support tissue organization field theory of tumorigenesis?

“…Osseous abnormalities of unknown origin, which can be considered neoplastic, were identified in the extinct Late Cretaceous giant salamander of Uzbekistan [ 14 ]. Two alleged cases of neoplasms were also reported in temnospondyls from the Early Triassic of Russia [ 13 , 15 ], but the reliability of their diagnoses is currently being questioned.…”

“…The extensive amount of available dinosaur material allows for derivation of some palaeoepidemiological inferences [3,9]. In contrast, documentation of neoplasms in non-amniotes is scarce, both in the herpetological and paleontological literature [8,[10][11][12][13][14][15]. Osseous abnormalities of unknown origin, which can be considered neoplastic, were identified in the extinct Late Cretaceous giant salamander of Uzbekistan [14].…”

First cancer in an extinct Quaternary non-human mammal

“…Neoplasms have been documented in the pre-Cenozoic tetrapod fossil record, including Triassic (e.g. Haridy et al 2019;Novikov et al 2020), Jurassic (e.g. Rothschild et al 1998Rothschild et al , 1999 and Cretaceous (e.g.…”

“…The Cenozoic tetrapod fossil reports of tumours are limited to the Palaeocene eosuchian crocodile Leidyosuchus (= Borealosuchus) formidabilis (Moodie 1918), Oligocene canids (Wang and Rothschild 1992) and in a lower Pliocene balaenopterid whale (Hampe et al 2014). Examination of the Quaternary period revealed possible benign tumours in a fossil elephant (Kobayashi 1937;Kubiak 1965), Ursus spelaeous (Pales 1959), fossil horses (Patte 1937), Mammuthus primigenious (van Essen 2004;Leshchinskiy 2012), and an extinct hominid (Odes et al 2016). This scenario contrasts with the extremely rich and diverse tetrapod fossil record of the Cenozoic, especially regarding the Quaternary fossiliferous deposits.…”