Cancer Has Been Around A Long Time

A 1.7-million-year-old example:

The cancer has been identified as an osteosarcoma, an aggressive form of the disease which usually affects younger individuals in modern humans, and typically results in early death if left untreated.

Edward Odes, who co-wrote the paper, which is published in the South African Journal of Science, said: “Modern medicine tends to assume that cancers and tumours in humans are diseases caused by modern lifestyles and environments, but our studies show the origins of these diseases occurred in our ancient relatives millions of years before modern industrial societies existed.”

Archaeologists on a collaborating team also found a two million-year-old fossil of a benign cancer, which was discovered in the vertebrae of a child.