What Happened To Camels In North America?

The United States Army accidentally set feral camels loose in the wild west in the 1800s. In 1836, U.S. Army Lieutenant George H. Crosman proposed establishing a camel corps to help transport supplies. In 19th century Australia, English settlers explored the continent’s vast interior. But the hot, dry climate of the Outback was too harsh even for the most resilient horses.

So, settlers and traders enlisted the help of another domesticated animal that was up to the task: the camel. Thousands of camels were imported to Australia to work as pack animals on expeditions and trade routes. They continued to cross the continent until the early 20th century when they were effectively put out of business by the arrival of the combustion engine. The camels were set loose in millions of square miles of arid desert where few animals could survive. Those camels didn’t survive. They thrived! Today, that feral population numbers over one million!

Their broad feet help them:

• To help them walk on shifting sands.
• To store energy in fatty humps.

What happened to camels in North America? (Fossils Research)

Camels are associated with arid environments, especially hot environments. People are amazed that camels originated in North America about 45 million years ago. They would have arrived in Eurasia via Bering Land Bridge, which connected Alaska to Russia. Here are some theories and factors that may have contributed to the disappearance of camels in North America:

Climate Change: Around the time when camels went extinct in North America, the continent was undergoing significant environmental changes. The end of the Pleistocene epoch marked the transition from the Ice Age to a warmer climate. These climatic changes could have altered habitats and affected the availability of suitable vegetation for camels.

Overhunting and Human Impact: Human hunting and the arrival of early human populations in North America may have played a role in the extinction of camels. Overhunting, competition for resources, and potential habitat destruction could have put significant pressure on camel populations.

Shifts in Ecosystems and Vegetation: North American ecosystems and vegetation patterns shifted as the climate changed. This alteration may have affected the availability and distribution of suitable habitats and food sources for camels, impacting their survival.

Coevolution with Other Herbivores: Camels were part of a diverse megafauna community that included other large herbivores like mammoths, horses, and bison. Changes in the populations and dynamics of these animals may have influenced the camel population indirectly through competition for resources or changes in predation patterns.

Camels are famous for their adaptations to flourish where most other large mammals would perish. But the fact is, camels didn’t originally evolve in the desert at all. They didn’t even evolve in Africa or Asia, where they live today. The story of the camel begins over 40 million years ago in North America and a rainforest.

The first possible member of the camel family is Protylopus which appeared in the fossil record about 45 million years ago. Protylopus was well suited to this environment because it was an artiodactyl, an even-toed, hoofed mammal whose members today include antelope, deer, and pigs. At the time, the flat-footed stance of the camel was assumed to be a primitive condition that other artiodactyls lost as they adapted to living in more open environments.

The suborder Tylopoda includes camels and their extinct relatives. It was named for the wide “cushion feet” scientists thought all camels always had. But it turned out that the splayed toes that make modern camels so good at traversing the desert weren’t a feature that camels started with. They were a later adaptation. Protylopus also didn’t have many other traits associated with camel family members, like long limbs and long, flexible necks.

Camel Fossils in North America

The camel remains were discovered on west-central Ellesmere Island in the stretch cone and fewer areas. There are two fossil sites that paleontologists are working on there, called the beaver pond site. Then about ten kilometers away, there’s the filed leaf bed site. That’s where the camel was discovered. It took three field seasons to recover all of the bones. These are fragments, and they all put together a part of a limb bone of a camel. Paleontologists have a couple of pieces of evidence indicating this is the camel.

• First, there’s collagen fingerprinting. This is work done by Mike Buckley at the University of Manchester using collagen fingerprinting. He could identify from the fragmentary remains that this animal was a camel.

In the field, these fossil fragments look like shards. They could even be fossil wood. They look much like the easy wood in the Strathcona area. Strathcona fiord has a remarkable fossil record of the Pliocene age. So about three and a half million years ago, paleontologists had evidence of this time in the form of fossilized trees. So there’s a lot of fossilized wood. There are animals like a bear, a deer, and a camel.

Several traits seen in modern camels could have been very helpful for the high arctic camel. For example, the wide flat feet for walking on sand could also have helped snow. In addition, the hump serves as fat storage. So this could have been essential for an animal that would have to survive a long dark, cold winter. In addition, camels have huge eyes that could also be suitable for seeing in the low-light regime that characterizes the winter in the boreal forest.

Protylopus is so strange that it’s sometimes put in a family with other bizarre, not-quite-camel creatures called the Oromeryicidae. Protylopus is still considered one of the earliest known Tylopods. It had many of that group’s more subtle.

But it was defining traits, like having incisor teeth in the upper jaw and sharp, tusk-like teeth in the lower jaw. Speaking of its teeth, this tiny camel has one more thing. A closely related group of artiodactyls called ruminants has four-chambered stomachs that help digest grasses. But Protylopus and its descendants have had to make do with less efficient three-chambered guts.

So, Protylopus was more of a browser, preferring a diet of soft leaves and fruit over grass, which will play a significant role in its evolutionary story. The little Protylopus didn’t make it out of the Eocene. But it had a cousin with whom it shared an ancestor. It was better suited to the mosaic of forests and grasslands that transformed North America. That cousin was the slightly larger Poebrotherium, which appeared about 37 million years ago.

• Poebrotherium had long, slender limbs, good for running on more open terrain, but like Protylopus, it still walked on hooves rather than toe pads.
• Fossils of Poebrotherium have been found across western North America, and in a greater range of habitats, from wooded grasslands to shortgrass prairies.

Its teeth specifically show its shorter molars, and still rely on leaves rather than grass as its main food source.

Camels evolution

Poebrotherium disappeared from the fossil record about 33 million years ago. But other lineages continued to thrive as the shrubs and trees of the Oligocene turned into the grassy, open Miocene. It was the time of what you might call the Camelid Explosion!

• In the Miocene, camels reached their peak of diversity when nearly 30 genera roamed all over North America.

Camels were so successful and abundant that they’re one of the most common herbivores in Miocene fossil beds. This explosion in diversity saw the development of four different subfamilies, including the one that led to all modern camels: Camelinae. While these families had a lot of differences, they also had one major thing in common. They didn’t walk on tip-toes anymore.

For instance, fossils of the long-necked Aepycamelus have been found in deposits from this time, from California to Florida. In addition to its quite giraffe-like features and impressive height, this camel was notable. It’s one of the first to have feet like modern camels. While early camelids walked on the tips of their hooved toes, Aepycamelus walked on the padded bottoms of its feet.

It had relatively short toes, with ankle bones splayed out at the base, suggesting that its toes spread apart and were supported by large pads. These new feet were a great adaptation to its new environment. Because Aepycamelus browsed on the open savanna, a lot like a modern giraffe does, where trees were fewer. So it had a lot of ground to cover in its search for food. But how this camel looked and lived also brought about another innovation: It gave rise to a whole new way of walking.

• Aepycamelus was probably the first animal to develop the “pacing gait” seen in modern camels.

In a pacing gait, the front and back legs on the same side move simultaneously, rather than the front and back legs on opposite sides. It keeps those long legs from knocking into each other as the camel speeds up. That, in turn, allows for a longer stride that conserves energy. This is great when you have a lot of ground to cover. But the pacing gait also makes the animal much less stable, which is why most four-legged mammals don’t use it. It causes an awkward rocking motion as all the animal’s weight moves from one side to another.

It is where those wide, flat-toe pads came in handy. They helped stabilize the big, heavy camelids as they swayed from side to side, searching for their next meal. As the Miocene went on, camels were getting bigger and heavier.

• Megatylopus was one of the biggest camels, 3.5 meters tall – a meter and a half taller than most camels today.

Megatylopus is also one of the first camels we’re sure had that other famous camel feature: a hump. It had spines on the vertebrae below its neck that were incredibly long, perfect for supporting a fatty, muscular lump of tissue. Those fat stores probably helped Megatylopus as it paced across the ever-expanding grasslands of North America.

• While Megatylopus wandered far and wide within North America, a close relative would be the first camel to leave the continent.

Sometime in the Miocene, Paracamelus crossed the Bering land bridge into Asia, changing camel history. The earliest fossils of this camel have been found in Nevada, dating back about 12 million years. By 7 million years ago, this intrepid explorer had already made it as far as Spain. Its fossils have been found throughout Europe and Asia, like China, Russia, Turkey, and Romania. Perhaps the strangest place it’s been found is on Ellesmere Island in northern Canada, where a 3.4 million-year-old fossil was reported in 2013.

That’s a strange place to find camel fossils because it’s far north. So far north that, at 78.5 degrees latitude, it’s in the Arctic Circle. The Arctic was warmer 3 million years ago than it is today. If Paracamelus had stayed in this environment year-round, it would still have lived in boreal forests with deep snow. Also, it experienced average annual temperatures below freezing and endured 6-month-long winters with little sunlight.

The adaptations that allowed Paracamelus to survive the unforgiving conditions of deserts and grasslands may also have been what allowed it—other camels to possibly survive in the Arctic. For instance, their humps would have served them well during those long winters. Their large furry bodies would have retained heat longer. Their broad, padded feet that worked well on sand could have functioned like snowshoes.

• Camelus, the genus of modern camels, was the first camelid to evolve outside of North America.

Its descendants are what is now known as the Old World Camels. They had to wait a few million years before their favorite travel companion hit the scene. Once humans and camels found each other, both animals would be changed forever.

About 5,000 years ago, humans in Asia domesticated Camelus bactrianus, the Bactrian camel. These are the double-humped camels that originated on the steppes of Central Asia. But there was a whole population of Bactrians that were never domesticated!

Fossils And DNA Records

DNA evidence has revealed that, by 700,000 years ago, the wild and domesticated Bactrians had diverged enough to become two completely distinct species. Only about 1400 wild Bactrians are alive, the only genuinely wild members of the Camelus genus. At the same time, Bactrians were becoming domesticated in Asia. Another species, the Dromedarieswere also starting to be used by humans around The Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa.

Those dromedary camels are the species that were sent to Australia in the 1800s. But old-world camels aren’t the only members of the camelid family. They’re not the only ones that we domesticated. While ancient old-world camel relatives were roaming the Arctic 3 million years ago, another traveled differently.

• Members of a genus known as Hemiauchenia left North America to check out South America, which had recently become connected by a land bridge.

Hemiauchenia likely became the direct ancestor of all of South America’s camelids. It includes the wild guanacos, which eventually gave rise to the llama. The wild vicugna, from which alpacas are descended. So today, all modern members of the camelid family worldwide are either domesticated or have a domesticated descendant.

• That’s because all the features that made camels so good at adapting to harsh ecosystems are their size, pacing gait, and splayed toes. Their humps also made them useful companions to humans throughout the ages.

So, why do camels no longer roam their native turf of North America? In the second half of the Miocene, grasslands expanded, causing camels’ preferred leafy foods to become less common. While animals that were better adapted to feed on grass as horses flourished.

• One North American camel, called Camelops, lived long enough to cross paths with humans when we arrived in North America.

Its remains have been found at a human hunting site about 13,000 years ago. Soon after, Camelops vanished, and the time of camels in North America ended. But camels survived in their new homes on other continents.

Once again began to spread to new frontiers with the help of human companions. So, camels have made an incredible journey that began in North America. They’ve adapted to some of the world’s most extreme environments, from the deserts of northern Africa to the Australian Outback.

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