Remains of extinct giant camel discovered in High Arctic

A research team led by the Canadian Museum of Nature has identified the first evidence for an extinct giant camel in Canada's High Arctic.The discovery is based on 30 fossil fragmentsof a leg bone found on Ellesmere Island, Nunavut and represents the most northerly record for early camels, whose ancestors are known to have originated in North America some 45 million years ago.

Source - esciencenews.com...

reply to post by AtticusRye


I think I just threw up...

Makes sense that camels originally evolved to cope not with hot-dry, but cold-dry climates - and so would have been quite at home in some Arctic environments (though not so much today when it's generally too wet)

Their hump carries a fat reserve - not water as commonly thought - and bactrians in particular are quite hairy and happy to leave in the cold dry climate of the Gobi desert (which is, incidently, the nearest habitate today to the mammoth steppes that covered Siberia during the ice age)

reply to post by Trackhunter


I had to do a search and read two other articles to finally discover that a "giant" paleo-camel is about 30% larger than its modern countepart--in other words, these "giants" are about 2.7m (8.8ft.) at the shoulder.

Seriously--"journalism" these days. If a headline describes a "giant" something-or-other, wouldn't you think the exact degree of giantism would be one of the first things they describe? How would we know what "giant" means? For all their readers know it could have been goddamn 60 feet tall! Jeez Louise....

You are totally right @AndyMayhew, Its
Fascinating the Camelidae family are so hardy and being able to cope with harsh environment. Camelids first appeared very early in the evolution of the even-toed ungulates, around 45 million years ago during the middle Eocene , in present-day North America. Source - en.wikipedia.org...

@Ex_CT2 Hey that's media sensationalism, but it does sound like those robotic camel like tanks of movie Starwars - The Empire Stikes Back.


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