#aepycamelus

Secret Land of the Past. Written by Miriam Schlein. Illustrated by Kees de Kiefte. 1992.

†Aepycamelus giraffinus

Art credit: Carlost1205

Alticamelus with Aelurodons by Rod Ruth

Aepycamelus – Miocene (20-4 Ma)

I kind of wish I was uploading this on a Tuesday, so I could call it Tallboy Tuesday, but no, it’s Monday. I’ll think of something, but in the meantime, it’s Aepycamelus. Aepycamelus pairs nicely with an elegant white wine, perhaps a chardonnay.

Aepycamelus is a camel who first shows up in the dawn of the Neogene period, and sticks around for most of it. It lived on the prairies of North America and was convergent with giraffes, of all things. Its long legs and neck were perfect for life on a grassland dotted with clusters of tall trees. Its remains are found all over North America, from Florida to California. It was a successful genus, with ten identified species. Older paleo fans might recognize it as Alticamelus, which is just a different name for the same animal. It’s similar to the Apatosaurus/Brontosaurus dichotomy.

Aepycamelus is a bit of a landmark form of fossil camelids. Camelids before it walked flat on their feet, but Aepycamelus has evolved the padded toes found on its modern cousins. It has the same stilt legs and general body plan, but it also has a lot of differences.

Today, we only know one genus of camel, Camelus. There are two species, C. dromedarius and C. bactrianus, the Dromedary and Bactrian camels. I’m a big fan of the Bactrian myself. They’re quite different, but have a lot of features in common. They’re desert dwellers with wide toes for walking on sand. They can go long periods of time without food or water, and store fat in humps on their back, which can see them through serious droughts and allow them to travel long-distance. Their stamina is something else.

Looking at evolution in hindsight, there’s only one genus of camel still around, and there aren’t many steps from there to the belief that camels were “evolving toward” the form of Camelus, that this is what a camel is supposed to be. The thing is, starting from the beginning of the camelid tree and working forward in time, you see that Camelus is a really weird genus of camel. It’s not the end goal or the standard for camels, but actually a highly-specialized form suited for living in deserts. Historically, camels looked much more like their cousins, the alpacas. Extinction is uncaring and unfeeling, and, for one reason or another, only the specialized forms of camel made it to this end of the Neogene-Quaternary boundary. It’s also worth mentioning that camelids evolved in North America before spreading to South America and Eurasia and going extinct on their continent of origin.

The history of camelids—and many modern groups—is replete with stories like this. There’s no shortage of twists and turns in the history of life, and camelids represent the concept pretty nicely. They’re a weird group with a handful of weird representatives in Eurasia and South America today. There are other mammals with similarly rich histories and only a few remaining survivors—hyraxes, sloths, and proboscideans being some of the most famous examples. But we’ll talk about them another day.

Aepycamelus is a nostalgic animal to me. I mentioned at the beginning of this writeup that they’re synonymous with Alticamelus, and that’s exactly how I first knew it. I read about it in a book from my grandparents called Prehistoric Monsters did the Strangest Things. Unfortunately, I couldn’t track down scans of the pages it’s on, but the book is pure, unadulterated classic dinosaur literature for kids. It’s super-outdated now, since it’s around 40 years old, but it’s full of charming art and it was one of my favorite books when I was a young paleo enthusiast.