Revealing the healing of Dino-sores

07 May 2014 Scientists have used state-of-the-art imaging techniques to examine the cracks, fractures and breaks in the bones of a 150 million-year-old predatory dinosaur. The University of Manchester researchers say their groundbreaking work - using synchrotron-imaging techniques - sheds new light, literally, on the healing process that took place when these magnificent animals were still alive. The research, published in the Royal Society journal Interface , took advantage of the fact that dinosaur bones occasionally preserve evidence of trauma, sickness and the subsequent signs of healing. Diagnosis of such fossils used to rely on the grizzly inspection of gnarled bones and healed fractures, often entailing slicing through a fossil to reveal its cloying secrets. But the synchrotron-based imaging, which uses light brighter than 10 billion Suns, meant the team could tease out the chemical ghosts lurking within the preserved dinosaur bones. The impact of massive trauma, they discovered, seemed to be shrugged off by many predatory dinosaurs - fossil bones often showed a multitude of grizzly healed injuries, most of which would prove fatal to humans if not medically treated. Dr Phil Manning, one of the paper's authors based in Manchester's School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, said: "Using synchrotron imaging, 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.