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Remains Of A Giant Found In Frozen Wasteland
The fossils were collected over three summer field seasons (2006, 2008 and 2010) and are about three and a half million years old, dating from the mid-Pliocene Epoch. Other fossil finds at the site suggest this High Arctic camel lived in a boreal-type forest environment, during a global warm phase on the planet.
The research, by Natalia Rybczynski, Ph.D., and co-authors including John Gosse, Ph.D. (at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia), and Mike Buckley, Ph.D. (at the University of Manchester, England), is described in the March 5, 2013, edition of the online journal Nature Communications. Read the paper.
Credit: Canadian Museum of Nature
The fossil bones of the High Arctic camel laid out in Natalia Rybczynski’s lab at the Canadian Museum of Nature. The fossil evidence consists of about 30 bone fragments, which together form part of a limb bone of a camel.
“This is an important discovery because it provides the first evidence of camels living in the High Arctic region,” explains Dr. Rybczynski, a vertebrate palaeontologist with the Canadian Museum of Nature, who has led numerous field expeditions in Canada’s Arctic. “It extends the previous range of camels in North America northward by about 1200 km, and suggests that the lineage that gave rise to modern camels may have been originally adapted to living in an Arctic forest environment.”
The camel bones were collected from a steep slope at the Fyles Leaf Bed site, a sandy deposit near Strathcona Fiord on Ellesmere Island. Fossils of leaves, wood and other plant material have been found at this site, but the camel is the first mammal recovered. A nearby fossil-rich locality at Strathcona Fiord known as the Beaver Pond site has previously yielded fossils of other mammals from the same time period, including a badger, deerlet, beaver and three-toed horse.
Credit: Canadian Museum of Nature
Illustration of the High Arctic camel on Ellesmere Island during the Pliocene warm period, about three and a half million years ago. The camels lived in a boreal-type forest. The habitat includes larch trees and the depiction is based on records of plant fossils found at nearby fossil deposits.
Determining that the bones were from a camel was a challenge. “The first time I picked up a piece, I thought that it might be wood. It was only back at the field camp that I was able to ascertain it was not only bone, but also from a fossil mammal larger than anything we had seen so far from the deposits,” explains Rybczynski, relating the moment that she and her team had discovered something unusual.
Some important physical characteristics suggested the fossil fragments were part of a large tibia, the main lower-leg bone in mammals, and that they belonged to the group of cloven-hoofed animals known as artiodactyls, which includes cows, pigs and camels. Digital files of each of the 30 bone fragments were produced using a 3D laser scanner, allowing for the pieces to be assembled and aligned. The size of the reconstituted leg bone suggested it was from a very large mammal. At the time in North America, the largest artiodactyls were camels.
Full confirmation that the bones belonged to a camel came from a new technique called collagen fingerprinting that was pioneered by Dr. Mike Buckley at the University of Manchester in England. Profiles produced by this technique can be used to distinguish between groups of mammals.
Minute amounts of collagen, the dominant protein found in bone, were extracted from the fossils. Using chemical markers for the peptides that make up the collagen, a collagen profile for the fossil bones was developed. This profile was compared with those of 37 modern mammal species, as well as that of a fossil camel found in Yukon, which is also in the Canadian Museum of Nature’s collections.
The collagen profile for the High Arctic camel most closely matched those of modern camels, specifically dromedaries (camels with one hump) as well as the Yukon giant camel, which is thought to be Paracamelus, the ancestor of modern camels. The collagen information, combined with the anatomical data, allowed Rybczynski and her colleagues to conclude that the Ellesmere bones belong to a camel, and is likely the same lineage as Paracamelus.
“We now have a new fossil record to better understand camel evolution, since our research shows that the Paracamelus lineage inhabited northern North America for millions of years, and the simplest explanation for this pattern would be that Paracamelusoriginated there,” explains Rybczynski. “So perhaps some specializations seen in modern camels, such as their wide flat feet, large eyes and humps for fat may be adaptations derived from living in a polar environment.”
Natalia Rybczynski from the Canadian Museum of Nature collects a fossil of the High Arctic camel in 2008 at the Fyles Leaf Bed site on Ellesmere Island, Nunavut. She uses toilet paper to gently wrap the bone for transport to the field camp.
Credit: Canadian Museum of Nature
The scientific paper also reports for the first time an accurate age of both the Fyles Leaf Bed site and the Beaver Pond site—at least 3.4 million years old. This was determined by Dr. Gosse at Dalhousie University using a sophisticated technique that involves dating the sands found associated with the bone. The date is significant because it corresponds to a time period when the Earth was 2°C to 3°C warmer than today, and the Arctic was 14°C to 22°C warmer.
The bones of the High Arctic camel are housed in the Canadian Museum of Nature’sresearch and collections facility in Gatineau, Quebec, on behalf of the Government of Nunavut.
Other contributors to the report include C. Richard Harington, Ph.D. and Researcher Emeritus at the Canadian Museum of Nature; Roy Wogelius, Ph.D., at the University of Manchester; and A.J. Hidy, Ph.D., at Dalhousie University.
Credit: Wikipedia
Support for the research was provided by the Canadian Museum of Nature, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (Canada), the National Geographic Society (for the 2006 field season), the Northern Scientific Training Program (Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada), the W. Garfield Weston Foundation, the Polar Continental Shelf Project of Natural Resources Canada (logistics), and the Natural Environment Research Council (United Kingdom).
The Canadian Museum of Nature is Canada’s national museum of natural history and natural sciences. It promotes awareness of Canada’s natural heritage through signature and travelling exhibitions, public education programmes, scientific research and a dynamic web site (nature.ca), as well as the maintenance of a 10.5 million-specimen collection. The museum’s legacy of Arctic research dates back 100 years to the first Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1913.
Note to Media
Natalia Rybczynski is available for interviews. Available images include the camel-bone fragments, the research team at work on Ellesmere Island and an illustration of the High Arctic Camel in its forest environment.
Contacts and sources:
Senior Media Relations Officer
Canadian Museum of Nature
2013-03-06 11:16:18
Source: http://nanopatentsandinnovations.blogspot.com/2013/03/remains-of-giant-found-in-frozen.html
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If they wanted the public to be interested….they might have had the foresight to establish some kind of size/scale for this animal.
No perspective….no interest.
How much bigger than a modern camel?
haha how can you tell what the bones are off .. There are only a few fragments .. More crap from the evolutionists to say, see, camels evolved or some shit like that. Like when they found lucy. They only has a few fragments and the were found miles apart from each other.. If ye believe this crap ye would believe the Earth was flat just because someone with a few letter added to their name.. I smell a rat!!!
Not to throw in a Monkey wrench but the early pioneers and workers brought some camels in to work the Railroads and Mining . Don’t know if that was a million years ago….geez what some will uncover for a bit of funding….
If you read the Holy Scriptures (The Holy Bible) at ,
GENESIS 6 ; 3-5 ,
GIANTS OF MEN AND BEAST.
What is the most interesting is WHAT they did not tell you. The fact that at one time Earth had a physical pole shift, Mammoths and other animals where found frozen with fresh food froze in there stomach. Did you forget about the frozen Mammoth carved out of the ice and air lifted out back in the 90,s ?. How does a large animal freeze with fresh greens in there stomach?, how did a giant camel build by God Himself to flourish in arid dry regions end up where wooly mammoths have been found. Just how old is this Planet?.
Gee, if you would have added the word camel in the title, I would not have opened the link!
It doesn’t even say who smoked the Camel…
There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for super size animals, including at one time humans. Camels are no exception.
The planet used to have higher levels of oxygen than today, was warmer and food was more abundant, oxygen promotes muscle growth, warmer conditions produce more food, the combination resulted in giants of all species, some of which survive today.
The giant tortoise for example, the ostrich, many of the whales, giant cedar trees and ferns, certain giant lillys, certain species learnt to adapt to changing conditions and kept their size, most did not.
Evolution can just as easily devolve, as has homo sapiens several times in our history on earth.
Just wait until you see what’s really under the ice….
Looked like a giant rock broke up to me, possible petrified wood.