Monostotic fibrous dysplasia in the temporal bone: a late prehistoric occurrence.

Fibrous dysplasia, characterized by benign osteolytic and osteoblastic lesions may involve one or several bones. Recent investigators have suggested that it may be merely a phase of what have previously been thought to be several different bone diseases. Isolated fibrous dysplasia in the temporal bone is infrequent. Several reports of this disease have appeared in the literature of paleopathology, but none involved only the temporal bone. Monostotic involvement of the right temporal bone was discovered in the skull of an adult male recovered from an archeological site dating from the Late Mississippian period (A.D. 1,350-A.D. 1,650). It will provide an opportunity for preliminary documentation of the antiquity of this disease in the southeastern portion of the United States.