Credit: SciTechDaily.com Study finds surprisingly high incidence of osteochondrosis in these extinct predators.Ice Age sabertooth felines and dire wolves experienced a high occurrence of bone disease in their joints, according to a research study released just recently in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Hugo Schmökel of Evidensia Academy, Sweden and colleagues.Osteochondrosis in Ancient SpeciesOsteochondrosis is a developmental bone illness known to affect the joints of vertebrates, consisting of humans and numerous domesticated species. Credit: La Brea Tar Pits and Museum & & Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, CC-BY 4.0 Research Findings From La Brea Tar PitsResearchers examined over 1,000 limb bones of sabertooth cats and over 500 limb bones of dire wolves from the Late Pleistocene La Brea Tar Pits, finding small defects in lots of bones constant with a particular symptom of bone disease called osteochondrosis dissecans (OCD). These problems were generally seen in shoulder and knee joints, with an occurrence as high as 7% of the examined bones, substantially higher than that observed in contemporary species.Implications and Future ResearchThis study is limited to isolated bones from a single fossil area, so additional study on other fossil websites might expose patterns in the prevalence of this illness, and from there might shed light on aspects of these animals lives.
