Modern Paleopathology, The Study of Diagnostic Approach to Ancient Diseases, their Pathology and Epidemiology - Let there be light, the light of science and critical thinking

The study of paleopathology has two very different constituencies, the medical scientist and the zoologist/paleontologist/anthropologist. Their investigative procedures and professional jargon are different, sometimes to the point of mutual incomprehensibility. Paleontologists/anthropologists/zoologists have a limited data base for the characterization and interpretation of pathology. This must come from the human and veterinary medical experience.

What, beyond intellectual satisfaction, can the health care community expect from this relationship? The past history of the appearance and dispersal of infectious disease and cancer is of considerable theoretical importance and leads to new insights on the nature and transmission of diseases that are otherwise ambiguous. The discovery of rheumatoid arthritis in pre-Columbian North America exemplifies insights gained.

The current effort delineates osseous impact of disease (as manifest in clinical populations diagnosed in life), representation in the zoologic, paleontologic and anthropologic record, and assessment techniques that can be confidently applied. The chapters form 'columns' that provide the foundation for scientific critical thinking. The actual integration of the information is in its application. Our purpose is to provide a data base and atlas of actually documented skeletal impact of diseases (as population phenomenon), an initial data base of reported skeletal pathology, and a methodology for expanding this to new arenas.

The first section of the book examines the scientific basis of paleopathology, its transition from speculation-based musings, resolution of misconceptions and the denouement of paleo-epidemiology. The second section provides holistic analysis of the gamut of pathology/diseases with significant skeletal impact, with a validated archeologic/zoological/paleontological record. The third section provides a glossary to resolve the semantic challenges inherent to interdisciplinary efforts. The fourth section provides an atlas of pathology representation in the fossil record. Ultimately, this book intends to present a scientifically-validated approach to recognition of disease in the archeological, zoological and paleontological record, superseding previous speculation-based offerings.

Bruce M. Rothschild graduated from New Jersey College of Medicine.  He is a member of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, Fellow of the American College of Physicians, American College of Rheumatology and Society of Skeletal Radiology and elected to the International Skeletal Society.  He has been recognized for his work in Clinical Rheumatology and Skeletal Pathology where his special interests focus on diagnosis, clinical-anatomic-radiologic correlation, data-based paleopathology, evolution of inflammatory arthritis and infectious disease and origins of disease.  Dr. Rothschild is Professor of Medicine at IU Health and holds a Research Associateship at the Carnegie Museum. 

He has been Professor of Medicine at Northeast Ohio Medical University in Rootstown, Ohio, Adjuvant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Kansas and of Biomedical Engineering at The University of Akron, Ohio and Research Associate at the Biodiversity Institute of the University of Kansas and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. He was the first director of the Rheumatology Division at The Chicago Medical School and a prime force behind the resurgence of data-based paleorheumatology and comparative osseous pathology. 

He has been a visiting Professor at universities in the US, Canada, the Caribbean, South America, Europe, the Middle East, South Africa, Asia and Australia and has been an invited lecturer at universities, hospital and museums throughout the world.  He has published over 1000 papers and abstracts, including authoritative papers on bone maturation, the origins of rheumatoid arthritis, spondyloarthropathy, syphilis, tuberculosis, character of bone changes in metastatic cancer, myeloma, leukemia, tuberculosis, fungal disease, renal disease, treponemal disease, rheumatoid arthritis, spondyloarthropathy, gout, calcium pyrophosphate deposition disease, hypertrophic osteoarthropathy, primate bone disease and critical thinking not limited to paleopathology.  He is the author of 7 books and has participated in 8 Discover Channel/BBC documentaries on origins of diseases and ancient reptiles.

Dawid Surmik graduated from the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland, where he pursued

his entire academic career from B.Sc. to a doctorate, and where he currently works as an

assistant professor and researcher. He is a vertebrate paleontologist by education with special

interests in evolutionary biology, paleoecology, and taphonomy. He became interested in

paleopathology in 2016 when he accidentally identified an intriguing bone alteration in the fossil

material he was studying. Then he started collaborating with Professor Bruce M. Rothschild,

who was his mentor in the field, and with whom he began collaborating on subsequent projects.

 

In 2019, he received financial support from National Science Centre, Poland for the research

project ';Osteopathologies in the fossil record as a vector of paleoecological and

paleoepidemiological information,' the frame in which he studied pathologies of Triassic

marine reptiles from Germanic Basin, terrestrial Triassic tetrapods from Krasiejów, Poland and

dinosaur pathologies from Gobi Desert, Central Mongolia. Dawid believes that the prevalence

of diseases in animal populations sheds light on biosphere stress and is one of the most important

factors influencing the survival of organisms in nature.  Traces of diseases in the fossil

material provide a deep and multilevel understanding of the processes governing the evolution

of life on Earth. In particular, he thinks that examination of the occurrence of cancer in various

extinct animals will expand our knowledge of the evolutionary biology of neoplasms.

 

He is the author of several dozen publications including abstracts and scientific papers. He is the

reviewer and editorial board member of several respected scientific magazines. He collaborates

closely with several European research institutions, in particular with the University of Bonn,

Germany, where he is an associate researcher.

Filippo Bertozzo is a postdoc researcher at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Science in Brussel (Belgium). He studied in Italy, obtaining an undergrad diploma at the University of Bologna with extensive work on the ornithopod Ouranosaurus nigeriensis, and later a Master in Science at the Universität Bonn, Germany, with an analysis on the histology of pneumatic bones in sauropod dinosaurs.  He graduated at Queen's University Belfast -under the Horizon 2020 Program of the Marie-Curie Foundation- in 2021. His doctoral dissertation was aimed to identify and diagnose paleopathologies in ornithopod dinosaurs from the Northern Hemisphere, incorporating the data into an epidemiological approach to understand pathological trends and patterns, especially in iguanodontian dinosaurs. He combines traditional analysis (osteology, histology) to 3D imaging techniques (microCT analysis and digitization) to decipher behavioral aspects from paleopathological trends.  He is a member of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, the Canadian Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, the Palaeontological Association, the Società Paleontologica Italiana and the European Association of Vertebrate Paleontologists. He is an associate researchwe of the Sociedade de Historia Natural in Torres Vedras, Portugal. He collaborated with the Natural History Museum in London (UK), the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in Drumheller and the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto (Canada). He participated in fieldwork in Spain, Portugal, Germany, US (Nevada, Wyoming), Canada (Alberta), far eastern Russia and Niger.