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Julius Csotonyi
The giant ancestor of the modern camel lived in Arctic forests.
The ancestors of the modern camel included an Arctic giant that lived in chilly coniferous forests about 3.5 million years ago. The ancient ungulates were 30 percent bigger than living camels today, weighing about a ton.
Scientists pieced together a picture of this camel from a crop of 30 fossilized bone fragments found on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic. It's the first evidence that camel ancestors lived so far north. The location and age of the bone fragments indicate that the camel lived at time when the planet was 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius) warmer than it is today, when parts of the Arctic were covered in coniferous forests filled with larch and birch. The Ellesmere Island region itself was about 36 degrees F (20 degrees C) warmer than it is today.
"Being big was something camels did very well," Natalia Rybczynski, a research scientist at the Canadian Museum of Nature told NBC News. "An animal today that would be an analogue is the moose — it's huge," she added. A large body size would have allowed it to regulate its body temperature better during the winters and cover larger distances walking, she explained. Rybczynski and her collaborators described the fossil and its analysis in a paper published Tuesday in Nature Communications.
Today's living camels have broad, flat feet, to help them walk on sand. Those feet could have evolved in an Arctic camel to walk on snow, Rybczynski says. And the ability to pack away fat, as the modern camel does in its hump, could have been useful to an Arctic camel that needed to survive dark, snowy winters that were six months long.
Martin Lipman/Canadian Museum of Nature
These 30 fossil bone fragments belong to the tibia of a 3.5 million year-old camel ancestor.
Martin Lipman/Canadian Museum of Nature
This fossil chunk of the camel looks similar to wood. "You pick up everything that might be a fossil," Natalia Rybczynski says. When the day's find is analyzed back at camp, there are sometimes pleasant surprises. "We get back and say, 'Oh, it's not a piece of wood, it's a bone!'"
Rybczynski found the first fragment of the specimen in 2006. Over later visits in 2006, 2008 and 2010, she and her collaborators assembled a collection of 30 bone fragments that fit together to resemble the tibia of a large ungulate. A closer analysis of the structure of the bone hinted that they had a large cud chewer on their hands.
For further proof, the team extracted collagen, a protein, from the fossils. Frozen in the Arctic mud, the biological molecule was preserved exceptionally well, and it survived better than ancient DNA would have fared. "It's mummified," Rybczynski said. Collagen isn't as information-rich as DNA, but has enough of a chemical fingerprint to show which family of animals the fragments came from. The ancient northern camel is related to today's dromedary, and to another now-extinct camel relative called the Yukon camel.
The high Arctic camel's fossil traces suggest that weird adaptations found in the modern camel may have arisen to fill a different need in its ancestors, and serve as a historical example of a species that lived on a planet that was warmer than it is today. That's what makes the fossil hunt fun fo Rybczynski. "You can pick up these tiny fragments that are that big, that makes these connections," she says.
Nidhi Subbaraman writes about science and technology. Follow on Google+, Twitter, Facebook.
Leave a Comment:
A remarkable find. It's amazing to see how much information can be gleaned from a few bits of debris that I would have mistaken for loose tree bark.
I wonder what prompted such a huge shift in environmental preference, from cold forested regions to hot arid ones?
Bactrian camels live in the Gobi (in Mongolia), as well as in Tibet. Both places are frigid during much of the year.
I wonder if paleo-anthropologists will consider this find is evidence that today's world is on its upward beat back to the next peak of an Ice Age? Which means we are cooling off on our planet, not heating up.
Yes, the Ice Age saga is a hypotheses by scientists studying the millions of years the planet has existed, but I believe it is the most favored by most of them.
My point is my conviction that the liberalism against our vehicular use this day and age by naming our automobiles et al as the devastating source "global warming" (thinking it is increasing rather than not).
Those folks simply haven't done their homework.
Second
You should do your homework. Read all the literature not just the vast minority that supports your views.
Fair enough, but if they're closely related to the camels that inhabit the Middle East, clearly that species has an unusually wide temperature tolerance, right? I just wonder if this comes about because of unique pressure on the species.
Just so. The camels are unusually tolerant of very different, challenging environments. Unique pressures on isolated populations are the bread and butter of evolution.
Makes me think that part of the reason humans are so successful as a species is not only our diversity, but also our gregarious nature. Keeps us generalized, as opposed to specializing into different species or subspecies.
ROFL... Ferrosynthesis-3490482 you sound as if you have yet to find anything that supports your viewpoint. As far as my research goes, I think NewsVine would not want to print the unimaginable lists of all.
If you have been taught to read, write, and do basic math, you will find the article I chose to quote (below) gives not only different sides of of the issues, but also includes all the writer's sources which are also covering your particular water front.
ooops, shucks. You haven't completed 4th grade yet, though, have you. Tooo baaad, sooo sad.
Second
Your juvenile insults just remind me whom to ignore.
Sooooo sad!!
Checked out your reference. (Why I'm not ignoring you, I don't know) It is not very professionally done and it has an obvious bias, therefore making it one that I could not trust. If what it says is correct, one could make some kind of argument, but since it is written in a non-professional manner and is a bit sensationalist, I cannot trust it.
I prefer to trust in the real experts.
With the camels of the Arctic, there would be no Lawrence of Arabia figure but I bet there would be a Nanook of the North!
Also, notice the temperature of the earth 3.5 million years ago was 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer with
who cares about the climate of a forest from hundreds of millions of years ago jack we live in this world today and aren't 18 foot beatss that weight 2,000 pounds so we need to figure out how we can survive in this rediculous heat cause obviosuly it didnn't work out to well for these freak-camels that couldn't develop enough technologoical tools in time to save theyselves from solar flares, climate change, and pollution.
"This ridiculous heat" is not so ridiculous that it could plausibly prompt a major extinction event. Global warming will probably happen, and the world - people, plants, and animals - will have to adapt. Maybe in time it will be reversed, either naturally or via human environmental engineering, but for now we're just going to have to shut up and put up.
maybe you don't knoiw much about this isue sfa, but people die everyday from "this rediculous heat isn't so rediuclous" so I'd have to say that it is a major issue that is extinctioning people slowly at first but then more and more every year just like with the camels and there will be no time to adapt because we're too focused on our britney spears and milton bradley's of the world and not on the real issues like what really happened to the camels and how can we prevent it happening to us in the same amount of a time frame but you and people like you try and say that this isn't a big deal when really we could all be dead tommorow because of it you goon.
Litter, did you go off your meds?!
How clever. Make fun of someone because you disagree with them. Deaths due to climate change are sooo funny, aren't they?
Enjoy: https://www.google.com/search?q=africa+climate+change+effects&hl=en&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ
TROLLololol!
The reason we care about the climate of a forest from hundreds of millions of years ago is because it helps us understand climate change, which in turn helps us better prepare for the "rediuclous" heat that is "extinctioning" the Milton Bradleys. Knowledge = Power
thank you byronr at least someone here has some sense of how the f';ing world really works unlike these jabronies who think they're so smart and that stuff doesn't exist just because they don't personally know about it. And rickfc italready happened before so obviosuly it won't likely happen again, geologocial history isnt a cylclical thing and you can't say for certain anything because of it so get over yourself and say rest in peace to these cowws or whatever but then try and figure out how to fix what we're dealling with now not something that a non-existenet beast faced before captain kirk and the andromeda fleet ever originally fired up their laser-ships you cynic.
People die everyday from almost everything: heat, cold, cars, stairs, smog, rain, coconuts... freaking COCONUTS. That means jack squat. And it's quite laughable that you think people are going to die out entirely from being too distracted to deal with basic survival.
I never said it wasn't a big deal, I said it was inevitable and not the end of the world. Humanity will be able to cope with a rapid temperature change, and your strange assumption that human civilization will just roll over and die shows a remarkable lack of sense and imagination.
LitterHater you must attend the next Climate Change Summit. If you speak there, the world's foremost scientists will be dumbfounded!
100 Reddles
You betcha they would and should he, all the attendees would be simply at a loss for words! Acronyms would be most appropriate: WTF? OU81Again, STFU, GTFOuddaHere etcetera.
sfa it's morons like you who think that you're so intelligent and preparred for anything who will go first when the mammoth-waves and the seagull-pestilences begin to descend because that wasn't in your great plans for whatwill happen since you aren't any fortune teller you dont know. and there won't be any mass extinctions from stairs or co@!$%#s so that's completely different unless you think that everyone is dumb enough to buy into your paranoia-mongering humans will continue on with or without you but something tells me that you don't believe that, i'm sure taht you've got some great music-career that you think makes you so special but you can't sing CO2 posiisoning away so what good will that do you. some people still read books pal and it's those peeople who will have the intuition and wherewithalll to survive any unseen problems which arise so i suggestthatr you start wissening up a little bit because you never know what's around the corner no matter how smart you tthink that you are.
I don't know what I enjoyed most about your rebuttal: the senseless drawing of conclusions that I never made, the angry insults and prediction of my demise (followed by an affirmation that I don't know the future; I guess you do, huh?), or the blatant reversals in logic.
Here are some of my favorites!
Hilarious stuff. I know Tetra was just kidding around, but your tenuous grasp of English (and you imply I don't read books?), random jumps of logic, and desperate paranoia leads me to suspect you really are a crazy person. You should calm down and read something, dude.
By the way, as it suggests by my username, I'm an accountant, not a singer. You know what an accountant is, right? We do math. With money and stuff. But your guess was good too!
I may not know the future sfa but I am preparred for it so no matter what you and your condescending hhead want to say about me the truth is that you're just upset about a divorce, addiction that you can't kick, or some household problem like mold or whatever it is taht's bothering you the msot deep down and are trying to deflect some of that frustration off onto me for simply disagreeing witth your idea that these camels couldn't survive due to the climate and that somehow we will be able to when we're way more frragile than they are physically and don't have the abilitites that they did to reach food and not need shelter and deflect radiation. and obviously since im not a accountant i don't know exxactly what that means beyond numbers but i'm sure that it's not that important because someone as dellussional as you would never be put in chrage of anything that matters and you're a big tough guy for computers but after the boat leaves the dock you're the first one to be pushed off into the ocean because everyone really thinks that you suck.
Ha! You're doing it again!
My idea? Where do you get this stuff, dude? Loved the idea that we're less capable of adapting than camels, too. That's a really cool insight from someone using a computer to share (hilarious) ideas over the internet.
As for my personal problems, sometimes I feel like my job is demanding too much of my time and isn't making full use of my skills, and as a result I find the completion of my work tasks unrewarding. Any advice for that?
yeah I have a lot of advice for stuff like that but if I just hant it out to everyone for free I wouldn't be making full use of my skills now would i? since you seem like someone who genuinely needs some help I'll give you some little guidance though, you're nopt supposed to find fullment entirely with work you need to just dio what you're good at doing thjere to help the economy and then go home and find fullfillment in your hobbies or family but since i know that you don't have either of those things i'lll go a step furrther and say that you should invest in nabisco stock and then attend their investor-meetings and annual-conventions taht sahreholders can go to and also you need to find some woman desperrate enough to go with a guy like you and try and trick her into lovving you which will help out a lot unless you're only into math and book-scinece stuff.
Hm, that sounds like a lot of effort.
I do rather enjoy arguing with people with poor reading comprehension on the Internet. I guess I'll just stick to that for now.
All that book-science stuff and not enjoying math being the path to happiness....how do I survive?
And NOBODY helps the economy more than scientists. And all are woefully underpaid.
So apparently we are in the middle of a global cooling. Awkward...
Awkward for deniers who claim all the melting is from a natural cycle...
Since this camel lived the earth has been going through wild swings of climate with repeated glaciations. There's no, one, long-term trends. We're in the middle of a warm interglacial now, that we seem to be pushing in an even warmer direction, faster than usual.
You mean that meteorology is complex and not prone to consistent and easily understood trends of "hotter" or "colder"?
There goes the neighborhood.
Tetra... what are wild swings to us, and which human beings (as an entity) have survived in the past thousands of years, cannot even come close to the swings it appears (so far) that human beings cannot survive en masse.
These are the Ice Age cycles that last a few millions of years each, with our brief occupation only being a few tens of thousands called Global Warming, aka meltdowns, within each Ice Age cycle.
We can survive a little, but, so far, we cannot survive a lot.
"So apparently we are in the middle of a global cooling."
Um.... no. The climate was warmer then, yes, but it has gone up and down many times since then (ever heard of ice ages?), so this articles suggests absolutely nothing about what is happening NOW, does it? Awkward....
Darn, and I was so looking forward to a new ice age. Cool temps in Dallas and more snow and ice days to get more days off from work.
Don't need to wait for an ice age for that! Just come on up to Minnesota, dude. Got plenty of those "cool" temps and ice days for ya. ;)
ROFL... you "reformers" have not done your homework. Plant Earth is cooling off as is verified by the giant camel fossils evidently established.
Google the article "Global Warming: A Chilling Perspective" ( www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html ) ... the original version of that article, btw.
If you accept the favored hypothesis that our world is subjected to cycles of massive cold weather reaching successive and inhumanly cold peaks, and has been researched by science (the above is one of the best sources I have encountered) to be a rotation into modest, short lived meltdowns... these trivial melt downs are only 15,000 to perhaps 25,000 years duration. Those are the periods of Global Warming. NOT remotely akin to vehicular emissions of fossil fuels.
It is the only time humans can live in it appears. Then the cold climb starts. Ice Ages last millions of years in total ... a cycle which has a very brief "melt" between each peak.
The article provides more evidence of this. And the finding of those fossils of camels also establishes the concept that we are, in fact cooling off in the world's journey upward (or I should say "coldward") to the next Ice Peak.
One thing of interest is that also basic study reveals that within these sequential Ice Ages, thus far there doesn't seem to be any evidence of human beings in the previous global warming cycles.
Oh, humanity probably has quite a few thousand years ahead of us these days before we no longer can adapt to the cold weather... long past our time to continue our human beings' existence continues here... but how we will... or can ... deal with it is anyone's guess.
No we are not in the middle of a global cooling, just the opposite. We are at the end of a global cooling entering a global warming cycle. The biggy cool cycle of about 500 years and started to end in the 1860s. since then it has been warming with smaller and smaller periods of cooling, the last of which was in the 1950s. It will get warmer, maybe even as warm as it was in the Roman era or the 800A.D.s ... then once again it will cool down.
So... are they safe to eat yet?
I really like the artwork by Julius Csotonyi that accompanies this article. The light looks like autumn or spring, and I can almost smell the air.
rosem yes it's a interesting-looking picture but you can't "smell" "air" and this isn't even an accurate gateway into what life was really like back then because the barncale geese which are shown are flying to the north in this picture which is inaccurate as they would truthfully be flying northwest due to the dawn of cooler temperatures coming in from the north and the fact that the artist amde such an amateur error shows that he has no credibility in the field of prehistoric study and therefore no reasonable person can believe what he depicts here.
I think your username is inaccurate, LitterHater. It seems you hate EVERYTHING, not just litters. No wonder you're so pessimistic about the immediate future of the human race.
Litter
Beg to differ with you Litter Boy. See the article from LA yesterday? Along the coast, they definitely smelled the air there. Look at 4 March nbc news. I work at a dinosaur bone factory - have you ever smelled prehistoric defecation? Even though you probably have not, you should try it some time. If you can't do that, you can go to LA and experience the real smell at La Brea Tar Pits. Try to educate yourself better rather than provide troll comments.
nice try jack but I happen to have been a part of that story and can tell you for a fact that you didn't smell the air we smelled the particles in it. Why don’t you take one science class before trying to dole out scientific lessons to the masses and also the dinosaur factories would never hire someeone who's as clueless as you unless they needed to fill an idiiot-quota but since florida's so full fo them you probably wouldn't have gotten into the organization even then becuase of sheer numbers. and i'm pretty well educated in smells unlike you so know that tar doesn't have a scent so your tar pitts would be pointless to go study for this and whatever bone defecation is it probbaly isn't good for you to ingest so i'll pass but again nice work pal but you aren't dealing with florida people on here all the time so itt won't work.
sfa, the only things that I really can't stand are litter like yo umentioned but also ignorance, crime, and electostatic dischargge also theifs, so if you'd just get a little more informed about these issues that the article is trying to discuss I'd have no issues with you and maybe we could learn some things from each other like this section is meaant to have happeneing to begin with.
Litter, you do realize that "air" does not have a discrete chemical makeup, right? "Air" refers to any given chunk of gases that one happens to want to refer to, which includes specific, chemically independent gases like oxygen and nitrogen and such, but also includes particles that carry odorants that we can smell. So Jack is quite right; you can smell air if that air happens to have a scent.
what would a math-number-book guy know about the background of science when it comes to air? When I have a question about which number is bigger than what other number I'll ask you but until then stay out of this because real people are talking about real issues and that's obviously something that you're not very good at ddoing.
"math-number-book guys" know all sorts of interesting and relevant things. For example, I know that your issue with "air" having a smell isn't one of science, it's semantics, since Rose was referring to air, while you seem to have interpreted that as "oxygen".
So I guess I'm now a "math-number-books-words guy". My apologies for contributing to your discussion about "real issues" like whether or not air has a smell, since it seems to offend you, but this is kind of a public forum for discussion.
wrong again sfa, I wasn't interepretting what the art person said was air as oxygen I was talking about it as being the exact what she said, oxygen is what we breathe air is what we live in and it doesn't have a smell whereas oxygen does because it's a pyhsical thing whereas air is just empty space in between things, i thnik that they knew that in the 13th century maybe it's about time that you figure it out now in the 2th you maths-words-books-numbers-elements-guy.
Actually, we breathe air, not just oxygen. Another thing us "math-number-book-words-numbers-elements-guys" know is that when we inhale, we inhale air, as in the entire collection of local gases, which includes oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and an assortment of other things. And air is a physical thing just like oxygen (since air contains oxygen, you know); empty space is called "vacuum", and if you can't live in that because you'd have no air to breathe.
I know this is all a bit complicated, and English clearly isn't your first language. But keep trying and spend some time with a dictionary and I'm sure you'll get it!
wow, alriught first of all don't tell me where I can and can't live because that's up to me no matter what you and your precious government say so don't even try to tred on my rights which all people deserve. Also after that you need to calm down about all this air talk obviosuly you don't know wtf you're explaining because the oxygen is the only thing that you breathe in or else you're breatheing wrong,everything else gfets trapped in your nose and ejected back out as carbon dioxide, ever heard of it tough guy? i've got a science book i think still laying around in the back of my car that i was using to beat people who disobey me with over the head with but if you want to pay for the shipping costs i'll send it to you i guess and then you can try again after you've learned what the way things actually are.
Okay, this... this is so stupid it isn't even funny anymore. You're a crazy person trying to have a technical discussion when you barely understand the language, much less the science. You have a child's sense of logic and you're asserting outright lies as facts: non-oxygen gases do not get trapped in your nose, otherwise you'd poison yourself every time you breathed through your mouth.
I hope for the sake of your peers and neighbors (assuming you haven't been locked away yet in a padded room) that you've been trolling me all this time and there really isn't some wackjob out there holding up a science book full of made up facts and lecturing people about how air is space and camels are extinct.
Tears running down my face! I am laughing so hard. Litter, you gotta just be messing with SF right? I don't know what you're doing for a living, but I think Comedian should be your occupation. You are hilarious!
Ahh SF Accountant... do you really want to encourage our neighborhood troll? LOL you know whom I mean.
BTW I like your comments none the less, so maybe we should thank the Litter One... lol to give us the chance to follow your responses.
Well, I'm happy to have provided some amusement, at least.
I really can't resist trying to argue with crazy people on the internet. I'm way too easy to bait.
hehehe. SF, Litter just loves getting anybody going, he'll be more than happy to argue the other side of whatever he's actually trying to argue tomorrow. Some of the funniest exchanges I've ever read on the 'vine was when he and his only friend TFNJ got going. After a couple threads my sides hurt so bad that I was debating whether or not oxygen really was a necessary component at that moment in time.
Mitchell
I have been feeling ill, and missed hot topics such as this one. I wish I had gotten here on time to keep up with Litter's Amazing Tales of opposing views.
I've been trying to help Litter gain more friends than just me. Not sure how it's going. LOL
So they lived where it was cold but not near as cold as it is today. And then moved to where it is very hot compared to where they used to live.
So neither global cooling or global warming killed them.
Yet every species alive today is supposed to be threatened by just a couple of degrees of change?
Sure Wilbur. Sounds to me like life is much stronger than the alarmists claim.
it's thinking like this that gave hubert humphrey 31 million votes in nineteen sixty-eight, the econsystems are a lot more delicate than you think you idiot it's not the people who will be put at risk due to warmer global tmepratures it's their food-sources and air quality but you're probably too busy tickling your girlfriend to understand anything about serious issues like you just showed how ignorant that you are about. go focus on your own life and stay out of the rest of ours we'll deal with this with science, truth, and nobility whereas you have none of these thigns to back you up.
I dearly hope, for the sake of all of us, that nobody lets you deal with science, Hater. Now THAT'S a doomsday scenario.
It isn't so much the amount of temperature change so far, it is the speed of the change. What took hundreds of thousands of years back then we are causing to happen in a couple of centuries on top of the natural changes. Animals can't evolve fast enough to adapt to these changes in their habitat so they die off. Their niche may be filled by some other creature or it may remain vacant. This applies to plant life as well. The illustration shows mature trees living where only scrub tundra survives today.
Life is very adaptable and very strong. But you may not much like the end result,though, lol. Nobody has ever said that "every species" is threatened. Some will survive and thrive as the climate changes rapidly, others will perish. It's the nature of evolution. I do think humans will survive, but not so sure about the thriving part of it.
Of course our "modern camel" didn't descend from this one--rather they both share a common ancestor back a bit--North America is the ancestral home of the camel, so no surprise there--didn't mention that the Americas are still the home of three perfectly good camels--the Alpaca, the Vicuna, and the Llama--all went south--but camels non the less.
Stan
A camel without a hump is a wannabe.
poor camels they needed a carbon tax on the whole world to survive, without AlGore they perished.
Camels don't care about your global warming - just Cud. Now go eat your breakfast and be a good Camel...
Isn't it strange that an animal was buried under ice for such along time and only now have humans found it. Gee, the planet must have been a LOT warmer back then, yet life was abundant. And I thought "global warming" would cause more devastation than the sequester...