– Posted on March 7, 2013
Canadian research team, helped by scientists at The University of Manchester, discovered the first evidence of an extinct giant camel in the High Arctic. The 3,5 million year old fossil was identified using new collagen fingerprinting from bone fragments unearthed on Canada’s High Arctic Ellesmere Island. It’s the furthest North a camel has ever been found.
The fossils were collected during summers of 2006, 2008 and 2010 by Dr. Natalia Rybczynski, a vertebrate paleontologist with the Canadian Museum of Nature.
Dr. Natalia Rybczynski collects a fossil bone at the Fyles Leaf Bed site on Ellesmere Island in 2008. The fossil in situ looks very similar to wood. She uses toilet paper to wrap the fossil for transport to the base camp. CREDIT: Martin Lipman, Canadian Museum of Nature.
The camel bone fragments were collected from a steep slope at the Fyles Leaf Bed site, a sandy deposit near Strathcona Fiord on Ellesmere Island. Other fossil finds at the site suggest the High Arctic camel was living in a boreal-type of forest environment, during a global warm phase on the planet.
Dr Buckley carrying out the process of collagen fingerprinting to determine which species the bone fragments belong to.
Credit: The University of Manchester
At first, it was unclear which species the bones they found came from so they asked the help of Dr. Mike Buckley from Manchester Institute of Biotechnology. He used the pioneering technique called “collagen fingerprinting” to identify the animal. Dr. Buckley compared the profile he found with the 37 mondern mammal species as well as that of a fossil camel found in Yukon.
He found that the collagen profile for the High Arctic camel was almost an identical match to the modern day Dromedary as well as the Ice-Age Yukon giant camel. The collagen information, combined with the anatomical data, demonstrated that the bone fragments belonged to a giant camel as the bone is roughly 30% larger than the same bone in a living camel species.
Dr. Rybczynski said: “These bones represent the first evidence of camels living in the High Arctic region. It extends the previous range of camels in North America northward by about 1,200 km, and suggests that the lineage that gave rise to modern camels may have been originally adapted to living in an Arctic forest environment.”
“This is the first time that collagen has been extracted and used to identify a species from such ancient bone fragments. The fact the protein was able to survive for three and a half million years is due to the frozen nature of the Arctic. This has been an exciting project to work on and unlocks the huge potential collagen fingerprinting has to better identify extinct species from our preciously finite supply of fossil material.” – Dr. Buckley
The specimen found are spectacular, said Dr. Roy Wogelius from The University of Manchester’s School of Earth, Atmospheric & Environmental Sciences after he analysed the mineral content of the bones. His findings suggest that mineralization worked along with cold temperatures to help preserve the proteins in the bones. “This specimen is spectacular, and provides important clues about how such exceptional preservation may occur”, he said.
Related articles
- Manchester scientists unlock secret of giant Arctic camel (manchestereveningnews.co.uk)
- Giant camel fossil unearthed in the Arctic (richarddawkins.net)
- Palaeontologists discover giant camel species that lived in the High Arctic (wired.co.uk)
- Modern camel’s ancestor was an Arctic giant (science.nbcnews.com)
- Remains of extinct giant camel discovered in High Arctic by Canadian Museum of Nature (eurekalert.org)
- Giant ancient camel remains discovered in Canadian Arctic (news.nationalpost.com)
- Ancient High Arctic camel offers climate change clues (timescolonist.com)
- Ancestor of the camel was an Arctic giant (science.nbcnews.com)
- Next stop on the camel caravan: Canada’s High Arctic (cbc.ca)
- Scientists uncover prehistoric Arctic camels (abc.net.au)
Family Survival Protocol - Microcosm News 