Camels have been called ships of the desert. They have been taken from the Eurasian desert to Australian deserts to enable transport of materials in the interior of the continent. There, they have been replaced by rail and truck trains. When they were no longer needed, they were released to fend for themselves. They have survived on their own. Today, in many deserts, you are more likely to see a 4×4 Toyota truck than a camel.
It is believed, from bone records, that the earliest camels were about the size of a rabbit and lived in South Dakota, USA, 40 to 50 million years ago. Later, about 35 million years ago, there was a species the size of a goat. These are extinct now. Modern species are from ancestors that migrated from North America to South America through the Isthmus of Panama. Also, there was a migration to Eurasia through the region of the Bearing Strait
“A team led by paleobiologist Natalia Rybczynski of the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa found roughly 30 fragments of a camel’s lower leg bone on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic. The researchers estimate the animal’s leg was 29 percent larger than a modern camel’s. Back-of-the-envelope calculations indicate the beast stood 2.7 meters (<9 feet) at its shoulders, Rybczynski says, and weighed up to 900 kilograms (one ton).”
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In the left side below is an image of the bone fragments.
Isn’t it amazing how much information is created by so few bone fragments. Fossil records of fauna suggest the high arctic was once warmer and had trees.
“The breakthrough came from Dr Mike Buckley, a NERC research fellow at Manchester University. It uses the collagen in fossils to build a unique profile of the proteins in the bone. This fingerprint means even small fragments of bone whose DNA has long since decomposed can be labelled.”
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The skeleton on display is from a modern day camel, and I suspect not a full grown one.
In addition to the two clickable link boxes above, here are other links to find more than you ever wanted to know about camels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camel
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/the-giant-camels-of-the-prehistoric-high-arctic
