Malignant misfortunes

CANCER, the Scourge Of the modern
world, seems to have had its
deadly effects even on the dinosaurs
65 million years ago, leading to their
deaths. Juan Collar of the University
of Carolina, us, believes that subatomic particles called neutrinos
released from dying stars after collision
with the nuclei of living atoms,
could damage the DNA, an organism's
genetic building blocks, producing
cancer-causing mutations.

Collar observes that a dying star
could produce about 12 malignant cells
per kg of living tissue. The impact would
be greater on dinosaurs as they had
more tissue to become cancerous.
Further, neutrinos were not affected by
the outer layers of the body leaving the
cancer to develop in susceptible tissues
like bone marrow.