Before camels were masters of the desert, they were masters of the snow.
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For more information about the evolution of camels and their place in Canada's/Yukon's natural history, check out the incredible Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre either by visiting it in Whitehorse, or through their website: www.beringia.com/exhibit/ice-.... The lovely folks there gave us a tour and let us snap some photos and take video-we will share some of that on our social media channels in the future.
For a much broader look at the full evolution of camels, from beginning to end, check out this PBS Eons video: • When Camels Roamed Nor...
There weren't any great-looking Canada-focused maps depicting the time periods we cover in this short, so we purchased the rights to use a stylized topographical map and then photoshopped it to look similar to the diagrams we found for the ice age(s) and late Miocene epoch. The maps are far from perfectly accurate, but we tried to get it pretty close-specifically on the coastlines. For instance, the placement and size of the lakes in North America varied constantly across the millions of years we scroll through. There were also multiple ice ages that came and went, of course.
We reverse back in time to around 7 million years ago when discussing the Yukon Giant Camel-that date may not be perfectly accurate. Various sources specify that the Paracamelus migrated across Beringia anywhere from 10 to 5 million years ago. We decided to split the difference and keep it simple. The Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre states that the migration may have occurred "as early as 5 million years ago." When you are dealing with time periods so enormous in scope, it's hard to be entirely precise, so we implore you to read up on the subject and come to your own conclusion.
While there is consensus that the features that make camels suited for arid climates originated in snowy colder climates, there is debate regarding the evolution of their hooves. Camels don't gallop in the same way horses do, they have a strictly pacing gait-which means both of the legs on one side move at the same time. This can be really unstable, especially for large and wide animals like camels. So, it's possible that the width of the hoof evolved in response to their pacing gait-the wider the foot, the more stable the sway side-to-side.
To our knowledge, it's surprising to many to learn that camels originated in North America. The same goes for their distant relatives the Llama and Alpaca. Dromedaries, Bactrian camels, Llamas and Alpacas all came from a common ancestor in North America 45 million years ago called the Protylopus, a tiny deer-like mammal that lived in thick ancient rainforests. Millions of years later, during the Miocene, there was a camelid explosion and it ultimately led to some camelids moving North, and others moving South-those were the ancestors to Llamas and Alpacas. Strangely, the modern-day species of camelids live in the inverse direction of their origin point, which is why many don't realize camels evolved in North America.
You may notice that the extinction of the Western Camel coincides with another major migration in the world's history-the great Paleolithic human migration across the Bering Land Bridge to North America that occurred in earnest sometime around 14,000 years ago. While the camels had gone one way and assured their survival through evolution, the humans went the other and populated the entirety of the Americas. These Paleolithic hunter-gatherers were highly skilled, with the perfect tools to hunt Western Camels along with other Megafauna. While it is a theory that the Camelops extinction came at the hand of these new occupants, it seems pretty difficult to argue against it-especially since camel bones have been found at prehistoric camp sites next to firepits. But it's safe to say humans played at least some role in the end of camels roaming the Americas.
A small note about the High Arctic Camel: officially it's related to the Yukon Giant Camel, but apparently not identical. It is a Paracamelus though. This is why we gave it its own label. It lived on Ellesmere Island at the same time, the fossil dates to 3.4 million YA.
And no, Adam is not green-screened into a desert scene-that's the Carcross Desert, near Whitehorse, labeled usually as the "world's smallest desert." We are aiming to put together a little montage explainer video about it soon and we will share it on Patreon along with our social channels.