First published online on August 04, 2005 at Medicineworld.org History of Cancer

Many believe that human cancer is probably as old as the human race. There is plenty of evidence from paleopathology to suggest that cancer appeared much before the human race appeared on this planet. Earliest evidence of cancer is found in fossilized dinosaur bone dating back to 70 million years. Researcher Bruce Rothschild and colleagues of the Northeastern Ohio University College of Medicine in Rootstown studied over 10,000 dinosaur vertebrae from 700 museums across North America. They studied several families of dinosaurs including Stegosaurus, Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus, and Hadrosaurs and found that only one family namely the Hadrosaurs, or 'duck-billed dinosaurs ’ had evidence of cancer. Rothschild and colleagues found 29 tumors i