When you think of dinosaurs, you might imagine towering predators or gentle giants roaming prehistoric landscapes. But what if these ancient creatures could teach us about one of humanity's most persistent challenges: cancer?
Author
- Justin Stebbing
Professor of Biomedical Sciences, Anglia Ruskin University
In a new study , my team and I explored how fossilised soft tissues, preserved for tens of millions of years, could reveal new insights into ancient proteins that might one day help the study of cancer.
For decades, dinosaur research has focused on bones, which are much more likely to be preserved. But bones alone can't tell the full story of how these animals lived, or how they died. Advances in technology, like paleoproteomics (the study of ancient proteins) are now allowing scientists to analyse delicate fragments of soft tissues preserved in fossils.
In 2016, I read an article about the discovery of a new fossil in Romania with a tumour in its jaw. Those remains were from a dinosaur called Telmatosaurus transsylvanicus, a duck-billed, plant-eating "marsh bird". The specimen had lived between 66-70 million years ago in the Hateg Basin in present-day Romania.
I was fascinated by what we might learn from this. Although there were a handful of previous reports of cancers in other dinosaur bones , and previous findings of soft tissues like blood vessels in fossils , no one had ever described soft tissues in an ancient tumour.
To understand more, my team went to Romania and collected the specimen. We brought it back, and made a tiny hole into it with a drill the width of a human hair, taking a miniscule sample.
Then we mounted it onto a powerful microscope, called a scanning electron microscope . Inside it, we saw images of blood cells, which contain proteins.
In the original Jurassic Park film, the scientists create or clone dinosaurs from ancient genetic material. But in reality over millions of years the DNA is completely broken down.
Proteins however, unlike DNA, can be remarkably stable over time. Research has shown that they can persist in fossils for millions of years under the right conditions, acting as molecular time capsules. Studying these proteins can help us reconstruct biological processes, including diseases like cancer, that affected dinosaurs.
Cancer's deep evolutionary roots
Cancer is often seen as a modern plague, but it has ancient origins. Large, long-lived animals, from elephants to whales, are a paradox. Their size and longevity should make them cancer-prone, yet many have evolved remarkable defences.
Elephants , for example, carry extra copies of the TP53 gene, a tumour suppressor. Bowhead whales which can live for over 200 years, have ultra-efficient DNA repair mechanisms and damage to DNA is the root cause of cancer. Dinosaurs, as some of the largest animals to ever exist, probably faced similar problems.
My team's research builds on growing evidence that dinosaurs weren't immune to cancer. Fossilised tumours have been found in species like Tyrannosaurus rex and Telmatosaurus, ranging from benign growths to aggressive cancers. My team is aiming to uncover the molecular tools dinosaurs used to suppress tumours in the future.
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Bones tell us about anatomy, but soft tissues hold the keys to biology. In my team's study, the red blood cell-like structures we found in Telmatosaurus fossils represent gateways to understanding the dinosaur's physiology.
Proteins preserved in these tissues could reveal how dinosaurs managed oxidative stress which is linked to cancer, inflammation , or even immune responses to cancer. For instance, certain proteins might indicate mechanisms for detecting and destroying faulty cells before tumours can form.
This work also highlights a a need for a critical shift in paleontology: to preserve soft tissues, not just skeletons. Museums and researchers often prioritise intact bones, but fragments of fossilised skin, blood vessels, or cells can harbour molecular secrets. As technology advances, these overlooked specimens could become invaluable for studying disease evolution.
Bridging past and present
The link between dinosaurs and humans might seem distant, but evolution often repurposes ancient biological tools. Modern oncology already draws inspiration from nature and many chemotherapies come from plants or trees . The drug trabectedin, for example, used to treat soft-tissue sarcoma, comes from a marine organism called the sea squirt .
Expanding our search to extinct species could open a library of evolutionary solutions. If we can identify cancer-suppressing or cancer-promoting proteins in dinosaurs, these molecules might inspire new lessons about human cancers.
It's taken nearly a decade to get this far. Like so much work, this research underscores the importance of patience and we're not there yet. A real breakthrough might come when advances in research allows us to study ancient proteins in detail, tracking how cancer mechanisms evolved over millions of years.
Bridging paleontology and oncology is not only uncovering ancient history. We're potentially writing a new chapter in the fight against cancer.
Justin Stebbing does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
