Every day on my way to work, I drive past a farm that among its denizens counts several camels. Apart from the fun of seeing these large, strange mammals, they also serve as a reminder that wild camels once roamed across North America, until their extinction around 12,000 years ago. Although today, wild camels and their relatives are found in Asia, Africa, and South America, in a bit of evolutionary irony, camels actually originated in North America and spread around the world from there. The first camels appeared around 35 million years ago during the Eocene Epoch, in the form of small fast-running herbivores like Poebrotherium. By the Miocene Epoch, camels had diversified and grown larger. This image shows one of the upper left cheek teeth of a camel that lived here in California between 18 and 14 million years ago. This tooth was collected by the Western Science Center earlier this year at a fossil site in San Bernardino National Forest. It might belong to an extinct camel called Aepycamelus, which was widespread in North America during the Miocene. However, we are still studying this tooth to determine exactly what species it represents.
Camels kept going strong in North America up until their extinction at the end of the last Ice Age. One of the last camels in North America was the large species Camelops hesternus, which ranged across western Northern America, including California. This image shows the underside of a Camelops skull discovered at Diamond Valley Lake and which is part of the Western Science Center's collection. The teeth are highly worn, but still bear a close resemblance to the smaller Miocene tooth. Post by WSC Curator Dr. Andrew T. McDonald