By IANS,
London: Archaelogists have discovered body of a Roman woman with a tumour in her pelvis embedded with four deformed teeth and a bone.
Researchers believe the woman, aged about 30, whose body was interred in a large cemetery near Spain’s Lleida city, died some 1,600 years ago, Daily Mail reported.
An examination of the corpse revealed the woman suffered from a condition known to doctors as an ovarian teratoma — a Greek-derived term which means roughly a “monster swelling in the ovaries”.
Such tumours stem from mutations of the germ cells which form human eggs; they have the potential to create hair, teeth and bone – or even more complex organs like eyes.
It is understood it is the first time scientists have found this type of teratoma in human remains dating back to ancient times.