{"id":9459,"date":"2016-07-31T07:05:18","date_gmt":"2016-07-31T07:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=9459"},"modified":"2016-07-31T07:05:18","modified_gmt":"2016-07-31T07:05:18","slug":"fossil-is-evidence-of-earliest-human-cancer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/fossil-is-evidence-of-earliest-human-cancer\/","title":{"rendered":"Fossil is Evidence of Earliest Human Cancer"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"This<\/a>
This micro-CT image shows a tumor in an ancient foot bone from a human relative. (Credit: Patrick Randolph-Quinney, UCLan)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Although the underlying cause of cancer is not fully known, modern medicine indicates that the disease is likely caused by today\u2019s environment and lifestyles \u2014 factors, like diet, obesity and smoking.<\/span><\/p>\n

But a recent revelation suggests otherwise. Using 3-D imaging, scientists found that a fossilized foot bone, dating approximately 1.7 million years old, showed signs of osteosarcoma, an aggressive form of bone cancer. The fossil, located in South Africa, appears to have belonged to an ancient human.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The research was recently published in the\u00a0South African Journal of Science<\/span><\/a><\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou can opt for the paleo diet, you can have as clean a living environment as you want, but the capacity for these diseases is ancient and it\u2019s within us regardless of what you do to yourselves,\u201d said study co-author Edward Odes of the University of the Witwatersrand, in a\u00a0National Geographic article<\/span><\/a><\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The fossilized foot bone, specifically the metatarsal that runs between the ankle and the smallest\u00a0toe, wasoriginally excavated<\/span><\/a>\u00a0between 1960 and 1980 from the Swartkrans cave, of a World Heritage site in South Africa. But when two scientists at the Radiography and Tomography Section of the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation reexamined the bone with a method called micro-CT imaging they discovered a tumor on the bone was not benign, but malignant.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although the underlying cause of cancer is not fully known, modern medicine indicates that the disease is likely caused by today\u2019s environment and lifestyles \u2014 factors, like diet, obesity and smoking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":9460,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biology","category-research"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/fossil-cancer.jpg",800,505,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/fossil-cancer-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/fossil-cancer-300x189.jpg",300,189,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/fossil-cancer.jpg",750,473,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/fossil-cancer.jpg",750,473,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/fossil-cancer.jpg",800,505,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/fossil-cancer.jpg",800,505,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/fossil-cancer.jpg",800,505,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/fossil-cancer.jpg",800,505,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/fossil-cancer.jpg",600,379,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/fossil-cancer.jpg",600,379,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/fossil-cancer.jpg",760,480,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/fossil-cancer.jpg",550,347,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/fossil-cancer.jpg",95,60,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/fossil-cancer.jpg",640,404,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/fossil-cancer.jpg",96,61,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/fossil-cancer.jpg",150,95,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"Biology<\/a> Research<\/a>","tag_info":"Research","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}