THE CAMEL’S ANCESTOR

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 931, 26 March 1930, Page 14

THE CAMEL’S ANCESTOR

Very few people would be inclined to believe that the large and lordly camel is descended from an animal not much bigger than a jack rabbit, i but this, without much question, is a j fact. j f This very small ancestor lived in the | j remote Eocene Period, and had four £ complete toes on each foot and a neck * and limbs of only moderate length. 1 But in each epoch since the Eocene 1 we find the camel family gradually in- ] creasing in size and by slow degrees s losing its toes and developing the soft, 1 elastic pad which enables these ] animals to walk with ease on the shift- j ing sands of the desert or on the sharp, « irregular surface of lava fields. 3 Strange to say, the camel originated - its greatest size in North America, • from which* part of the world it has 3 disappeared. < An important discovery of the remains of fossil camels has recently been made in Western Nebraska, where nearly a hundred .skeletons of a small type of these creatures were found lying together. There was, no doubt, some special reason for these animals thus congregating to die. A possible explanation may be found in the known habits of the camel-like guanacos of South America, which wander about in herds of some thousands and when night comes on lie down close to one another like sheep. Such a herd was once kept under observation, and it was noticed that when in the morning the guanacos moved off no less than a hundred were left on the ground dead of starvation and cold. It is supposed that the discovery in Nebraska represents part ot a vast herd which perished in a similar manner many hundreds of thousands of years ago. The skeletons were covered first by wind-blown sand and then by deposits laid down by a river, and so have been preserved in a fossil state until today.