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Scientists have used light brighter than 10 billion suns to examine the cracks, fractures and breaks in the bones of a 150 million-year-old dinosaur.

Researchers said their groundbreaking work - using synchrotron-imaging techniques - sheds new light on the healing process that took place when these animals were still alive.

The study took advantage of the fact that dinosaur bones occasionally preserve evidence of trauma, sickness and the subsequent signs of healing.

Giant meat-eating dinosaurs were a hard bunch capable of taking punishment as well as dishing it out, research suggests. Scientists used synchrotron-generated X-rays to analyse the chemical structure of a foot bone from Allosaurus, a two-legged carnivore that lived 150 million years ago to make the finding

Diagnosis of such fossils used to rely on the inspection of gnarled bones and healed fractures, often entailing slicing through a fossil to reveal its secrets.

But the synchrotron-based imaging, which uses light brighter than 10 billion suns, meant the team could tease out the chemical ghosts lurking within the preserved dinosaur bones.

The impact of massive trauma, they discovered, seemed to be shrugged off by many predatory dinosaurs.

Fossil bones often showed a multitude of healed injuries, for example, most of which would prove fatal to humans if not medically treated.

Dr Phil Manning, one of the paper's authors based in Manchester's School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, said: 'Using synchrotron imaging, we were able to detect astoundingly dilute traces of chemical signatures that reveal not only the difference between normal and healed bone, but also how the damaged bone healed.

'It seems dinosaurs evolved a splendid suite of defence mechanisms to help regulate the healing and repair of injuries.

'The ability to diagnose such processes some 150 million years later might well shed new light on how we can use Jurassic chemistry in the 21st Century.

'The chemistry of life leaves clues throughout our bodies in the course of our lives that can help us diagnose, treat and heal a multitude of modern-day ailments.

'It's remarkable that the very same chemistry that initiates the healing of bone in humans also seems to have followed a similar pathway in dinosaurs.'

This is an artist's illustration of the Allosaurus the scientists investigated. Preserved dinosaur skeletons show signs of injury that the scientists were able to detect using state-of-the-art imaging techniques

Bone does not form scar tissue, unlike a scratch on the skin, so the body has to completely reform new bone following the same stages that occurred as the skeleton grew in the first place.

This meant the researchers were able to tease out the chemistry of bone development through such pathological studies.

'It's exciting to realise how little we know about bone, even after hundreds of years of research, said co-author Jennifer Anné.

'The fact that information on how our own skeleton works can be explored using a 150-million-year-old dinosaur just shows how interlaced science can be.'

Professor Roy Wogelius, another co-author from The University of Manchester, added: 'It is a fine line when diagnosing which part of the fossil was emplaced after burial and what was original chemistry to the organism.

'It is only through the precise measurements that we undertake at the Diamond Synchrotron Lightsource in the UK and the Stanford Synchrotron Lightsource in the US that we were able to make such judgements.'

The findings are published in the Royal Society journal Interface.