Paleontologists Teach Medical Students About Fossil Tumors

[Nandomas]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2006/0607-jurassic_docs.htm

Using medical-physics tools such as CT scans, medical students can learn to recognize a tumor even in a 150-million-year-old dinosaur bone. Paleontologists say the role of disease during evolution can shed light on the origins of some common medical problems. ...

[siteseer]

Yes, indeed, that's a great read.

There's a unique locality in the Upper Pliocene Tulare Foration, California, that yields rather common fossil tumors from several species of fish. The "bulbous fish growths," as field geologists and stratigraphers colloquially call them, resemble similar bony tumors that afflict modern weak fish, angel fishes, cod and catfish.

Here's a link to a page depicting both sides of a fossil fish bony tumor I collected a number of years ago from the Upper Pliocene Tulare Formation, California: http://inyo2.110mb.com/kh/fishgrowth4.html .

Inyo,

Yes, years ago, a retired USGS geologist used to run a Western Union/rock shop in Sunnyvale, CA. He had a large jelly jar full of those "bulbous fish growths" - the term he used to. He gave me a couple of them. He wasn't sure they were actually tumors, as some were saying at least as far back as the 60's, but no one seemed to be sure what they were. Are they tumors or are they some deformed part of fish anatomy? Was seeping oil contaminating (now-extinct) Lake Tulare, causing these deformities?

I haven't collected the Tulare despite several trips to the Kettleman Hills (concentrated on the Etchigoin and San Joaquin) but heard that someone was going to write up the fishes from there.