This week in deep time
A dinosaur bone that kept the mark of an infection
AI reconstruction — not a photograph · Shutterstock AI/Shutterstock.com · Shutterstock Standard License
Published · Triassic Water editors
Scientists read a swelling on a dinosaur's shinbone as the trace of a skin infection that reached the bone. What they said, and where it fits on this site.
Where in time
- Triassic
- Jurassic
- Cretaceous
- Today
The strip names periods, never numbers. The page for the period carries the dates and the evidence: cretaceous
What the scientists found
“researchers in Spain describe a swollen patch on the shinbone of an Iguanodon, which they say may be evidence of an advanced skin ulcer that had reached the underlying bone. If so, this could be the first time this type of response to a bacterial infection has been reported in a dinosaur.”
A bone is not only a shape. While an animal is alive its bones keep changing, and if something goes wrong on the surface of the body the bone underneath can react and grow. This bone kept that reaction, and it lasted as long as the fossil has.
“Here we document the occurrence of a palaeopathological lesion in a long bone of the iconic Iguanodon bernissartensis from the late Barremian Arcillas de Morella Formation (eastern Spain). The pathological long bone, a tibia, exhibits an anomalous overgrowth area at the midshaft covering part of its posteromedial side.”
The scientists write in their own careful language, so here is the plain version of that sentence: they found one leg bone with an odd swollen area part of the way along it. The stage they name sits inside the Cretaceous, the last of the three periods this site follows. cretaceous
“Based on a differential diagnosis, including traumatic fracture callus, neoplastic growths and infections, the bone lesion is consistent with a pathological periosteal reaction and cortical thickening caused by a skin ulceration in an advanced stage affecting the osseous tissue. This is, to our knowledge, the first report of this type of pathological response to a bacterial infection in a dinosaur.”
Notice how they got there. They did not look at the swelling and guess. They listed the things that can make a bone swell, such as a healing break or a growth, and worked out which one fitted the shape they could see and scan. That is what a scientific diagnosis is, and it is the same method a vet or a doctor uses.
Why is this on a site about water? Because the animal in this paper is a plant-eating dinosaur, and it drank. Every dinosaur did, from rivers, lakes and puddles, and that water is still here. The page about dinosaur water shows the numbers behind that idea. is our water dinosaur water
Read the paper: First occurrence of polymicrobial ulcer in dinosaurs — Royal Society Open Science
Three things to know
Fossils can record illness as well as shape. The scientists read the swelling as the bone's reaction to an infection that started in the skin.
The scientists placed the fossil in a stage of the Cretaceous. The period page shows what the world looked like across that time.
They reached their answer by ruling things out, one by one, the way a doctor does. The paper says it is the first report of its kind.
A word to learn
Ornithischia
the bird-hipped dinosaurs, mostly plant-eaters, including Iguanodon
Also this week
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“Whakaari/White Island's sudden eruption in December 2019, which killed 22 people and severely injured 25 others, was New Zealand's deadliest volcanic disaster in recent history.”
Story summary via Phys.org News Feed Services. Credit: Phys.org. — phys.org/news/2026-08-earlier-volcano-false-alarms.html A paper about how early to warn people near a volcano, and what a false alarm costs. This site explains where the water in a volcano comes from. can volcanoes create water
Source: Nature Communications
A map of the deep sediments under Los Angeles
“seismic waves ripple from the epicenter of a magnitude 7.8 earthquake near the Salton Sea into the Los Angeles Basin.”
Story summary via Phys.org News Feed Services. Credit: Phys.org. — phys.org/news/2026-09-los-angeles-basin-deep-sediments.html The soft layers under a city change how the ground shakes. This site has a page on what lay under that same city long before there was a city. los angeles
A scorpion the size of a coffee table, from before there were forests
“A meter-long scorpion with massive pincers stalked ancient Britain 415 million years ago, long before forests and the better-known age of giant insects.”
Story summary from ScienceDaily (https://www.sciencedaily.com), used with attribution. — www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260831015200.htm This one is older than any period this site covers, so it has no page here yet. It is included because it was found in Britain and it is wonderful.
Source: Palaeontology
Find it on this site
How this page was made
Compiled with AI assistance from the sources listed. Every quotation was checked against a saved copy of its source, and every line was checked by Triassic Water editors before publishing.
- Sources
- Story summary via Phys.org News Feed Services. Credit: Phys.org. (phys.org/feeds/)
- Paper metadata via the Crossref REST API (https://api.crossref.org/). (www.crossref.org/documentation/retrieve-metadata/rest-api/)
- Story summary from ScienceDaily (https://www.sciencedaily.com), used with attribution. (www.sciencedaily.com/newsfeeds.htm)
- First occurrence of polymicrobial ulcer in dinosaurs — Royal Society Open Science: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.261293
- How sure is this?
- Every quotation on this page is the source’s own words, checked against a saved copy of the source read on . The sentences in our own voice explain the quotations and point to pages on this site; they add no facts of their own. A new finding is one paper’s reconstruction of what happened — an estimate, not a photograph, and other scientists may read the same evidence differently.
The picture at the top illustrates the topic, not this find. Its label, credit and licence are shown with it.