Scientists Find Fossil Remains of Extinct Giant Camel in Canada
Posted on March 5, 2013
A research team led by the Canadian Museum of Nature has found fossil fragments of an extinct giant camel that lived in Canada's High Arctic. 30 fossil fragments of a leg bone were found on Ellesmere Island, Nunavut. These fossils are about three and a half million years old and date from the mid-Pliocene Epoch.
The giant camel was nearly three meters tall (about ten feet) at the hump according to a story in the Guardian. This is about 33% higher than the modern single-humped Arabian camel. An artist's illustration of the High Arctic camel is pictured above.
The research was conducted by Natalia Rybczynski, Ph.D., and co-authors including John Gosse, Ph.D. (at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia), and Mike Buckley, Ph.D. (at the University of Manchester, England). The findings were reported here in the March 5, 2013, edition of the online journal Nature Communications.
Dr. Rybczynski, a vertebrate palaeontologist with the Canadian Museum of Nature, said in a statement, "This is an important discovery because it provides the first evidence of camels living in the High Arctic region. It extends the previous range of camels in North America northward by about 1200 km, and suggests that the lineage that gave rise to modern camels may have been originally adapted to living in an Arctic forest environment."
Dr. Rybczynski explains the High Arctic camel fossil find in this video. Take a look:
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