Cancer’s Primeval Power and Murderous Purpose
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Aug. 29 (Bloomberg) -- It was 2010 and I was drivingthrough the badlands of northwest Colorado, far from the cool,green Rocky Mountains. This was the land where the oldest knownexample of cancer had been found: inside of a bone of a JurassicAge dinosaur.
About 150 million years ago, the malignant growth had eatenaway at the beast. It died and was buried under the layereddebris of the ages. But a fragment of its petrified skeletonchanced to survive. It was discovered by an unknown rock hunter,cut and polished in a rock shop, and purchased by a man onvacation -- a doctor who knew bone cancer when he saw it.