Dinosaurs Broke Their Bones Too

What did the dinosaurs know about bones and how did they learn it? A new study reveals that dinosaurs were able to survive and heal themselves after suffering bone-crushing injuries. As reported and published in the Royal Society journal Interface, paleontologists at Manchester University in England have employed a new type of imaging technology to reveal evidence of trauma and sickness, as well as subsequent signs of healing, preserved within dinosaur bones.

“Using synchrotron imaging, we were able to detect astoundingly dilute traces of chemical signatures that reveal not only the difference between normal and healed bone, but also how the damaged bone healed, ” explained Phil Manning, Ph.D, a researcher at Manchester’s School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences and co-author of the new study.

“It seems dinosaurs evolved a splendid suite of defense mechanisms to help regulate the healing and repair of injuries, ” he added. “The ability to diagnose such processes some 150 million years later might well shed new light on how we can use Jurassic chemistry in the 21st Century.”

Manning’s co-author of the study Jennifer Anné, said the synchrotron-based imaging, which focuses a light 10 billion times brighter than the sun, has helped scientists understand new things about the way bones heal. “It’s exciting to realize how little we know about bone, even after hundreds of years of research, ” Anné said. “The fact that information on how our own skeleton works can be explored using a 150-million-year-old dinosaur just shows how interlaced science can be.”