I Dug Up a Camel: Part 1

Sometimes the best science opportunities suddenly appear in front of you. In those instances, the best thing to do is say yes and embrace the experience that will one day make a grand adventure story. In November 2018, one of these opportunities knocked me off my feet, literally.

I was training in my Krav Maga class with my partner, an older man named Sherman, and a fellow graduate student, Mariah. We were working on defending against aggressive knife techniques, and one of the defenses ends up with the attacker on the ground, which is how I found myself looking up at my partners with the wind knocked out of me. As I stood up and caught my breath, Sherman asked Mariah and me if we liked paleontology. Turns out Sherman is the President of the Southwest Paleontological Society (SPS), and because he knew that Mariah and I are geology graduate students, he invited us both out to a paleontology dig in eastern Arizona in mid-November. A little over a week later I was in a car driving out to a campground in Safford, Arizona. The hunt for bones was on! Our quarry: a prehistoric camel.

The view from our campground on this dig near Safford, AZ.
PC: Jessica Noviello, 2018.

Our housing at the campground. I was prepared for a tent, but this works too!
PC: Jessica Noviello, 2018.

 Camels have a long history in Arizona that begins 45 million years ago in the Eocene period. Back then, Arizona was a rainforest, and the place where a small, deer-like animal made its appearance in the fossil record: Protylopus. This is the earliest known camel, and its discovery surprised paleontologists. Modern camels, and even most fossil camels, have cushioned, wide feet to help them move over unstable terrain like sand and grassland gravel. But Protylopus walked on four dainty toes on each foot. As southwest North America changed from rainforests to grasslands, these feet put the Protylopus at a mobility disadvantage, and they couldn't overcome it. They eventually died out, but not before starting the lineages that would eventually lead to modern camels.

Artist's reconstruction of Protylopus in its habitat.
PC: WILLEMSVDMERWE and PBS: Eons.

Ancient camels eventually traveled north and west across the landbridge that spanned the Bering Strait, into Asia and Europe, where they became the modern camels we know today. North America and South America finally connected to form the isthmus of Panama around 3 million years ago, leading to a significant migration event called the Great American Interchange. Species that had evolved on one continent quickly moved to the other, including some camels. The camels that migrated south would eventually evolve into the ancestors of llamas and alpacas.

Our camel died after this Interchange event, sometime between 2.2 and 2.4 million years ago. It belonged to the Camelops genus, enormous animals that stood 11.5 feet tall as adults, almost twice as tall as today's camels. Camel skeletons and bones are fairly common throughout the American west, but our camel was unusual for a few reasons. One, our camel was a sub-adult, or a camel teenager; two, our camel was one of three found within a 200 span of an ancient river bed; and three, our camel was complete.

Rib bones of our camel. PC: Jessica Noviello, 2018.

In paleontology, a complete skeleton is one where all of the bones from the skull to the tail are found together, including the small bones found at the ends of the limbs. Turning a dead animal into a fossil takes a long time that ranges from thousands to millions of years depending on the environment. During this time period, scavengers can take bones away from the rest of the skeleton, and natural catastrophes like floods and mudslides can wash bones away.

Finding an entire skeleton is rare. Our camel is only the third complete camel discovered so far in the entire southwest! For this camel to also be a sub-adult makes it even more valuable, as it shows us exactly what that animal looked like at its stage in development as it grew from baby to adult. Its completeness indicates it was buried quickly, before anything could move the bones away. The fact that it was found with two other camels (and an ancient turtle too!) in an old riverbed points to a sudden event, like a flash flood, as the cause of death.

What was it like to dig up the camel? What are the steps involved? Who does stuff like that on their weekends? Find out in Part 2 of this blog post, coming next week!

Additional source:
"When Camels Roamed North America." PBS: Eons. November 20, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJNoAE0UHzY