IF DINOSAURS HAD USED MOUTHWASH…
If the fangy meat eating dinosaurs had only practiced oral hygiene, they might have survived to pick us out of their teeth today. OK, the asteroid impact still would have ruined their day. But they would have flattened into the sandy layers of history with nice mouths.
Instead they have jaw bones riddled with massive sores. I don’t know why I’m so grossed out by this. Maybe because my anxious amygdala is still all worked up over the mean and crazy woman who accosted me a few days ago. Maybe because humans have a natural aversion to signs of contagious disease in others. Whatever the reason, the jawbones creep me right out. So why not share them? The little arrows point to holes chewed in the bone:
They made the news because they’re elegant evidence that dinosaurs regularly died of mouth infections. These infections cause similar erosions in the mouths of birds today — especially raptors who, like T. rex type dinos, eat meat. The parasitic organisms in their diet, or in the mouths of other dinos who bit them, settled in, bored in, and actually ate away their mandible bone.
Nasty, right? 
PS: Are we all really down with the death of the hyphen? I like the hyphen. Too much, it’s been said. Am I alone in this?
