The researchers described theropod phalanges as being "pathognomonic" for stress fractures, this means they are "characteristic and unequivocal diagnostically." Rothschild and the other researchers examined and dismissed other kinds of injury and sickness as causes of the lesions they found on the dinosaurs' bones. Lesions left by stress fractures can be distinguished from osteomyelitis without difficulty because of a lack of bone destruction in stress fracture lesions.