Diagnosing a dinosaur disease isn’t easy, especially when the patient has been dead for nearly 150 million years
“Specimens such as this can help shed light on what sorts of diseases were affecting dinosaurs millions of years ago,” says University of Wisconsin Oshkosh paleontologist. There are many different diseases that can cause respiratory infections, so the scientists had to narrow down the possibilities.
Based upon their study of Dolly and other organisms, Woodruff, Wolff, and colleagues propose that the most likely culprit is a pneumonia-like ailment known as airsacculitis. Rather than being a specific virus or pathogen, airsacculitis describes the inflammation or infection of the air sacs, which might be caused by bacteria, fungi, or viruses.
The disease might have been a death sentence for Dolly. Even though there’s no way to be certain how the dinosaur perished, Woodruff notes that diplodocids such as Dolly likely moved in herds, but an ill animal may have fallen behind or left the group. The disease might have then proven fatal for Dolly of its own accord, or it’s possible that a hungry predator saw the ailing dinosaur as an easy lunch.
One way that airsacculitis is spread in birds, Wolff notes, is in cramped conditions where a high concentration of feces and eggs can spread bacteria and cause the disease. Sauropods like Dolly are known to have nested in colonies, Wolff says, and in some situations airsacculitis might have run rampant in dinosaur nesting grounds.
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