Image via flickr / Keith Roper[/caption]
It has long been a long-held belief of scientists that camels, ubiquitous in modern times with dessert landscapes, originated in North America. A discovery published in Nature Communications Journal this week by Canadian and British scientists not only supports this theory, but accounts for the northernmost camel fossils found to date. The leg fossils were found near the Strathcona Fiord on Ellesmere Island, 1200 kilometres further north than previous northern remains found in the Yukon and have so far proved to be more closely related to modern day camels. Analysis has shown that these new bones belonged to a camel that was about 30 per cent larger than its modern day decendent.
When the camels roamed Ellesmere Island 3.5 million years ago, the landscape was a boreal forest with average annual temperatures of approximately 0 degrees celcius and 6-month long winters, said Natalia Rybczynski, a scientist from Canada’s Museum of Nature, and one of the scientists behind the discovery. It is believed that the camels’ humps (composed largely of fat) helped them weather this environment.
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Eva Voinigescu is an intern at Toronto Standard. Follow her on Twitter @EvaVoinigescu.
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