Human bone disease found in dinosaur
A disease known medically as Langerhans cell histiocytosis (LCH) can appear suddenly in people, mostly children aged 2–10 years. LCH-related bone tumours can be “very painful”, but fortunately the disorder is rare and disappears without intervention in many cases.
Recently researchers studying a juvenile hadrosaur (duck-billed dinosaur) fossil noticed distinctively-shaped cavities in two of the tail vertebrae. They suspected these bone defects were tumours. Sure enough, advanced micro-CT scanning of each vertebra enabled the researchers to assess the 3D mesh surfaces of the tumours, blood vessels, and bone surface. “The hadrosaur pathology findings were indistinguishable from those of humans with LCH,” the researchers observed. They concluded that “the disease is not unique to humans” and “it has survived for more than 60 million years.”
There’s an important message here for Christians who, though perhaps anti-evolution, think the ‘60 million years’ is benign, and that the Bible’s Creation/Fall/Flood 6,000-year timeline is negotiable. Accepting millions-of-years puts LCH and other human/dino diseases (e.g. see creation.com/dinotumour) into the world before Adam sinned, nonsensically turning God’s pre-Fall ‘very good’ creation (Genesis 1:31) into a ‘very painful’ one. Putting fossils before the Curse/Fall defrauds Christians of a coherent answer to the ‘problem’ of death and suffering (see creation.com/death). Ditch the millions of years.
- Tel Aviv University, Disease found in fossilized dinosaur tail afflicts humans to this day, physorg.com, 11 Feb 2020.
- Rothschild, B. and 4 others, Suggested case of Langerhans Cell Histiocytosis in a Cretaceous dinosaur, Scientific Reports 10:2203, 2020.
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