Washington, Sep 30 (Inditop.com) Tyrannosaurus rex, popularised by the Hollywood film “The Jurassic Park”, suffered from a potentially fatal infectious disease, similar to one that occurs in living birds, known as trichomonosis.
Tell-tale symptoms of trichomonosis include swellings and holes in the back of the lower jaw.
Some of the world’s most famous T-rex specimens, such as ‘Sue’ at the Field Museum in Chicago, and the holotype specimen at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh have holes like these in their lower jaw.
Birds of prey are particularly susceptible to trichomonosis if they eat infected pigeons. Adult birds can then pass the disease to their nestlings through beak-to-beak contact.
“The holes in tyrannosaur jaws occur in exactly the same place as in modern birds with trichomonosis. The shape of the holes and the way that they merge into the surrounding bone is very similar in both animals,” said Ewan Wolff, paleontologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-M).
“The cause of these holes in tyrannosaurs has previously been attributed to tooth gouges from biting or bacterial infections, but we think a trichomonosis-type disease is much more likely given the position and nature of the holes,” added Wolff.
The disease appeared to be quite common in tyrannosaurs and could have been deadly to those that were infected.
“As the parasites take hold in serious infections, lesions form around the jaw and inside the throat, eventually eating away the bone. As the lesions grow, the animal has trouble swallowing food and may eventually starve to death,” said Steve Salisbury, University of Queensland, Australia.
A lesion is a sore found on or in an organism, usually damaged by disease or trauma. Tyrannosaurs are thus far the only dinosaurs that appear to have had this disease. The researchers therefore faced the problem of explaining how it spread, says a UW-M release.
T-rex might have facilitated infection by biting each other or even through cannibalism. These findings were published in PLoS ONE.
