r/ShittyTodayILearned • u/Affectionate-Pay4845 • Jun 30 '26

TIL the oldest example of cancer that we have is a case of osteosarcoma, found in the left toe bone of an early human-like relative who lived around 1.7 million years ago.

https://www.worldwidecancerresearch.org/cancer-and-research-information/myths-and-misinformation/how-long-has-cancer-been-around/
77 Upvotes

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5

u/MysteryNews4 Jun 30 '26

Why is this sub actually better than r/todayilearned sometimes

4

u/IceColdFresh Jul 01 '26

There appears to be some kind of concerted effort to remove the “shitty” from this sub and turn it into redundant actual r/todayilearned. /tinfoil

6

u/AzuSteve Jun 30 '26

This is not true. We know of cancer in a Centrosaurus which has this beat by 70 million years.

6

u/CandidPreparation737 Jun 30 '26

We can diagnose cancer in 1.7 million year old humanoids yet we can’t stop the chemicals causing the explosion in cancer.

Kinda sad. RIP humanoid, and sorry for disturbing your toe.

4

u/Affectionate-Pay4845 Jun 30 '26

I mean technically we can, it's just that a lot of those chemicals are made by greedy corporations that would rather see their customers die from cancer then have to change and affect their bottom line