Re: Mesozoic illnesses

[don ohmes <d_ohmes@yahoo.com>]

Heh. Or, you could take dinosaur eggs and use them in the manufacture of flu 
vaccines ...

Is it a reasonable assumption that the Mesozoic fungi might be novel to your 
immune system? That might be the big risk, should one find you habitable.

Don

----- Original Message ----
From: David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>
To: DML <dinosaur@usc.edu>
Sent: Sunday, October 21, 2007 8:53:13 AM
Subject: Re: Mesozoic illnesses


> If people in the future went back to dinosaur times, wouldn't they
 risk 
> catching Mesozoic diseases?

Not very likely, because infection needs two: pathogens are adapted to
 more 
or less specific hosts. That's why you can't get foot-and-mouth
 disease, why 
only a few mammals and nothing else can get rabies, and why chimpanzees
 can 
be infected with HIV but don't get ill.

> With the Mesozoic being hotter and muggier than today, the bacteria
 and 
> viruses (virii?) of the time must have been more vigorous than 
> contemporary pathogens,

This does not follow at all. Heat and moisture just make survival
 outside of 
a host easier for pathogens. BTW, if Latin, then viri with a single i.
 A 
double i only happens when there's already an i in front of the -us or
 -um 
part.

> At least more deadly Mesozoic diseases would mean that dinosaurs had 
> superior immunity systems that medical science might want to obtain
 for 
> analysis...

For that, I recommend today's crocodiles. They live in hot swamps and 
occasionally tear limbs off each other, yet they don't seem to get 
infections.