Great Plains Dinosaur Museum, Malta, MT, USA.
Royal Ontario Museum, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Sci Rep. 2022 Feb 10;12(1):1954. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-05761-3.
Other than repaired fractures, osteoarthritis, and periosteal reaction, the vertebrate fossil record has limited evidence of non-osseous diseases. This difficulty in paleontological diagnoses stems from (1) the inability to conduct medical testing, (2) soft-tissue pathologic structures are less likely to be preserved, and (3) many osseous lesions are not diagnostically specific. However, here reported for the first time is an avian-style respiratory disorder in a non-avian dinosaur. This sauropod presents irregular bony pathologic structures stemming from the pneumatic features in the cervical vertebrae. As sauropods show well-understood osteological correlates indicating that respiratory tissues were incorporated into the post-cranial skeleton, and thus likely had an 'avian-style' form of respiration, it is most parsimonious to identify these pathologic structures as stemming from a respiratory infection. Although several extant avian infections produce comparable symptoms, the most parsimonious is airsacculitis with associated osteomyelitis. From actinobacterial to fungal in origin, airsacculitis is an extremely prevalent respiratory disorder in birds today. While we cannot pinpoint the specific infectious agent that caused the airsacculitis, this diagnosis establishes the first fossil record of this disease. Additionally, it allows us increased insight into the medical disorders of dinosaurs from a phylogenetic perspective and understanding what maladies plagued the "fearfully great lizards".
除了修复后的骨折、骨关节炎和骨膜反应外，脊椎动物化石记录中几乎没有非骨骼疾病的证据。这种在古生物学诊断上的困难源于以下几点：(1)无法进行医学测试；(2)软组织病理结构不太可能被保存；(3)许多骨病变没有诊断特异性。然而，这里首次报道了一种非鸟类恐龙的鸟类样呼吸疾病。这种蜥脚类恐龙呈现出不规则的骨病理结构，源于颈椎的充气特征。由于蜥脚类恐龙表现出明确的骨骼相关性，表明呼吸组织被纳入了后肢骨骼，因此可能具有“鸟类样”的呼吸形式，因此将这些病理结构识别为源于呼吸感染是最合理的。尽管一些现生鸟类感染会产生类似的症状，但最合理的是气囊炎伴骨髓炎。气囊炎源于放线菌到真菌，是当今鸟类中极为普遍的呼吸疾病。虽然我们无法确定导致气囊炎的特定病原体，但这一诊断确立了这种疾病的第一个化石记录。此外，它使我们从系统发育的角度对恐龙的医疗疾病有了更多的了解，并了解了困扰“可怕的大蜥蜴”的疾病。
