A gaping hole in the bony frill of a Triceratops dubbed “Big John” may be a battle scar from one of his peers.
In summer 2021, Flavio Bacchia, director of Zoic LLC in Trieste, Italy, was reconstructing the skeleton of Big John, the largest knownto date, when he noticed a keyhole-shaped fenestra on the right side of its frill. Bacchia then reached out to Ruggero D’Anastasio, a paleopathologist at the “G. D’Annunzio” University of Chieti-Pescara in Italy who studies injuries and diseases in ancient human and other animal remains.
“When I saw, for the first time, the opening, I realized that there was something strange,” D’Anastasio says. In particular, the irregular margins of the hole were odd. He had never seen anything like it. A sample of bone taken from the border of a keyhole-shaped gap in Big John’s bony frill shows evidence of bone healing, suggesting the hole is a battle scar.To analyze the fossilized tissues around the fenestra, he obtained a piece of bone about the size of a 9-volt battery, cut from the bottom of the keyhole. The rest of Big John sold at an auction for $7.
The team found that the irregularity of the hole margins that D’Anastasio had observed was also present at the microscopic level. The border was dappled with microscopic dimples called Howship lacunae, where, in one of the first steps of bone healing, bone cells eroded the existing bone to be replaced with healthy bone. The researchers also observed primary osteons, formations that occur during new bone growth.
In addition, a chemical analysis revealed high levels of sulfur, indicative of proteins involved in new bone formation. In mature bones, sulfur is present in only low quantities.articles, delivered to your inbox
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