Scientists Find Ancient Camel Fossils in Panama

Posted on March 17, 2012

University of Florida scientists found ancient camel fossils in an excavation at the Panama Canal. Researchers describe two species of ancient camels in the study published online in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. The long-snouted camels, Aguascalietia panamaensis and Aguascalientia minuta, are also the oldest mammals found in Panama. They roamed the region 20 million years ago when it was a tropical rainforest. These camels belonged to an evolutionary branch of the camel family separate from the one that gave rise to modern camels based on different proportions of teeth and elongated jaws.

Aldo Rincon, a UF geology doctoral student and lead author of the study says, "Some descriptions say these are 'crocodile-like' camels because they have more elongated snouts than you would expect. They were probably browsers in the forests of the ancient tropics. We can say that because the crowns are really short."

Study co-author Bruce MacFadden, vertebrate paleontology curator at the Florida Museum, says, "People think of camels as being in the Old World, but their distribution in the past is different than what we know today. The ancestors of llamas originated in North America and then when the land bridge formed about 4 to 5 million years ago, they dispersed into South America and evolved into the llama, alpaca, guanaco and vicuna."

ANIMALS