It's possible that the sore tooth is a fluke. But it's also possible that paleopathology is providing a new insight on evolution. Rothschild said, because most specimens display good health. One of his current projects, for instance, is studying the fossils of marine reptiles to see how they evolved protection against caisson disease, the decompression sickness known to divers as the bends. The bends occur when an animal moves from a high-pressure environment to one of low pressure, as when a diver surfaces.
Gas bubbles can form in the blood if the change is too rapid, resulting in pain.
Rothschild said it could also result in bone death in areas where gas bubbles have cut off the flow of blood. He has been studying these symptoms in sea turtles, about half of which seem to have suffered the bends during the age of the dinosaurs, compared with 1 percent today. Discovering what happened in these animals to reduce those rates could benefit divers.