A researcher from the Canadian Museum of Nature has identified the first evidence of a fossilized giant camel on Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, breaking the most northerly record for camel fossils.
The team of researchers found 30 fossil fragments of a camel leg bone in the Strathcona Fiord area, collecting the evidence over three summer field seasons in 2006, 2008 and 2010, according to research published today in the online journal Nature Communications.
Natalia Rybczynski, a palaeobiologist at the museum, has led several expeditions in the Arctic and says the camel discovery is important because it provides the first evidence of camels in the Arctic region.
"It extends the previous range of camels in North America northward by about 1200 kilometres, and suggests that the lineage that gave rise to modern camels may have been originally adapted to living in an Arctic forest environment,” she says.
The camel fossils are about three and a half million years old.
Rybczynski also says the research and discovery is important for studying the Arctic climate.
“People are really surprised to find out that in fact, camels originated about 45 million years ago in North America,” she says.
The remains are said to be from a warm period 3.5 to 4 million years ago when the Arctic was as much as 18 degrees warmer than it is today. Mean annual temperature in the polar north would have been around zero degrees.
The camel bones are currently housed in the Canadian Museum of Nature’s research facility in Gatineau.
Until now, the most northerly-found camel came from a giant fossil found at Old Crow Basin, in Canada’s Yukon.