Posted: Jul 30, 2016 4:25 pm
igorfrankensteen wrote:It is the CAUSES or TRIGGERS of cancer which have changed, and been added to, over time.
This is another example of poor science reporting. A prejudiced journalist discovers that an assumption they made is false, and assumes their false assumption was universal, and not just peculiar to them.
That may be, but one of the authors of the papers is saying something very similar:
Prof. Lee Berger, an author on both papers and leader of the Malapa project where the fossil vertebra was found adds "not only has there been an assumption that these sorts of cancers and tumors are diseases of modernity, which these fossils clearly demonstrate they are not, but that we as modern humans exhibit them as a consequence of living longer, yet this rare tumor is found in a young child. The history of these types of tumors and cancers is clearly more complex than previously thought."
Both papers are available for free:
"Earliest hominin cancer: 1.7-million-year-old osteosarcoma from Swartkrans Cave, South Africa"
"Osteogenic tumour in Australopithecus sediba: Earliest hominin evidence for neoplastic disease"