14 DAY TRIAL // According to the findings of a recent investigation, dinosaurs were kind of like witch doctors, meaning that they had amazing healing activities and were able to overcome gruesome injuries despite being denied the wonders of contemporary medicine.
In a paper published in today's issue of the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, a team of scientists explain that, as shown by evidence at hand, predatory dinosaurs were especially gifted at healing their broken bones.
Specifically, they were able to recover from fractures and bone trauma that would surely send people six feet under if not properly treated by doctors, EurekAlert informs.
This means that, at least as far as healing abilities are concerned, these dinosaurs are much more like reptiles rather than like birds. Interestingly enough, this is despite the fact that these ancient creatures are more closely related to the latter.
In order to make observations concerning the healing abilities of giant carnivorous dinosaurs that roamed the Earth millions of years ago, specialists used powerful X-rays to study bones originating from an Allosaurus fragilis.
The dinosaur remains that the researchers got to examine are estimated to be about 150 million years old and bear signs of cracks, fractures, breaks, and the healing process that came after the ancient carnivore had sustained these injuries.
It was thus revealed that, unlike humans and other animal species, Allosaurus fragilis and probably other predatory dinosaurs as well were able to pretty much shrug off massive trauma and did not make a big fuss about having to walk around with one or two broken bones.
“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,” says researcher Dr. Phil Manning.
Furthermore, “It seems dinosaurs evolved a splendid suite of defence mechanisms to help regulate the healing and repair of injuries. 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.”
As detailed in the paper in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, the X-rays that specialists used while carrying out this investigation had beams brighter than 10 billion suns and made it possible to illuminate breaks in the 150-million-year-old bones.
Had it not been for this technology, the researchers would have had to resort to collecting the information they were after by slicing through the remains and closely examining them. By doing so, they would have damaged the bones.