The Jawbone Version of a Common Hip Disease in Diving Dinosaurs and Contemporary Humans
by Jerry E. Bouquot
DDS, MSD, FAAOMP, Dipl. ABOMP,
Dipl. AAOM (Hon.),FICD, FACD, FADI, RSM (UK)
Abstract
Since the 1860s dentists have reported an osteomyelitis-like bone disease which seemed not to be a true infection but rather a slow, progressive, unexplained “death” of cancellous bone and marrow. This disease typically produced “soft bone” and “hollow” cancellous spaces, yet did not perforate the cortex, and did not produce elevated temperatures, pus or surface erythema and edema. Today we know this as ischemic osteonecrosis, a disease especially associated with hypercoagulation states and affecting primarily the hips, knees and jaws. It has been found in >40% of supposedly “normal” cadaver mandibles, >25% of dried skull mandibles, and >15% of edentulous sites in living adults. Because the slow cutting off of blood flow to a bone region is the only way to produce hollow spaces or cavitations in bone, this has been definitively diagnosed in fossilized hip bones of diving dinosaurs living >90,000,000 years ago,
