Dear Colleagues: I've posted some pictures on zoobook which were taken by a student as part of her senior paper on non-skeletal bone formation. This specimen was a famous zoo resident and one-time circus animal, the first Indian Rhino on display in the U.S. during the 19th C. The Rhino died in 1903 at an age of at least 40 years and entered the Academy of Science of Philadelphia collections with no good records on its health history or cause of death. The skeleton clearly shows a rapidly proliferating pathological condition along the thoracic skeleton. The lesions are most widespread on the distal ribs and sternum, but also affected the sternum and a few of the TV. The student did a microCT scan of one of the ribs and suspects that this is an infection rather than a neoplasm of some kind. It is similar to lesions from tuberculosis in humans, and tuberculosis would be plausible for a rhino as well, though the zoo health resources don't reveal another case.
http://zooarchaeology.ning.com/photo/albums/pathological-lesions-on-zoo-rhino-from-philadelphia
We'd be grateful for and interested in any comments that you might have on this specimen.
Kate Moore
Zooarchaeology Lab
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania USA
|