Walking a Mile for a Camel - SHADOWS on the TRAIL Hexalogy!

Figure One -  Camelops hesternus. 

    

One of the most enjoyable parts of writing the SHADOWS on the TRAIL Hexalogy was doing the archaeological and geological research required to make the novels as prehistorically accurate as possible while still maintaining the freedom to create dynamic characters and an intriguing storyline. One of the very first extinct Pleistocene mammals I used in my first book of the hexalogy, SHADOWS on the TRAIL, was Camelops hesternus, an ancestor to modern-day camels. 

I took a bit of literary license in SHADOWS on the TRAIL by using Camelops in a minor role within an intricate plot. My purpose in using the beast was to highlight the climate change occurring at the time. SHADOWS on the TRAIL took place around 12,700 years ago during the Folsom Complex and the Younger Dryas climate event. Currently, there is no archaeological evidence that Camelops survived until 12,700 years ago in North America. As of this writing, the only direct evidence of an encounter between humans and Camelops in North America occurred at an archaeological site 108 miles southwest of Calgary, Alberta, called Wally's Beach. Using radiocarbon dating, archaeologists determined that humans at a future Wally's Beach butchered the camel around 13,300 years ago (Waters et al. 2015), six hundred years before my story in SHADOWS on the TRAIL took place.

   

Figure Two - Butchered camel remains at Wally's Beach represent the only direct evidence
that prehistoric humans hunted the animals in North America. 
(Photo: Brian Kooyman/University of Calgary)

The critical words in my last paragraph were the only direct evidence of an encounter between humans and Camelops in North America. There are several famous archaeological sites in the western United States where archaeologists found Camelops remains, but there was no evidence that humans caused the camels' demise. Some of the sites where archaeologists found Camelops remains were Agate Basin, Blackwater Draw, Casper, Colby, Lindenmeier, Murray Springs, and Lubbock Lake (Haynes 2009: p 48). 

So, I dealt with Camelops and the age discrepancy between current archaeological evidence in my book SHADOWS on the TRAIL. My philosophy toward the Pleistocene megafauna extinctions is simple. Just imagine how many Camelops remains are still buried out there on the land, undiscovered. How many Camelops' remains have urban sprawl destroyed, or sites where the remains weathered away on their own? Stone tools made by humans may have survived all those years, but the perishable bones of Camelops may not have. Fossilized camel remains are still out there in North America, buried and undiscovered, and they may or may not be associated with prehistoric human activity. If they are ultimately linked to humans, the evidence of the human-camel association might be younger or even older than the archaeological evidence found at Wally's Beach. 

When I write my historical fiction novels about Paleoindians in America, my usual tactic is to use extinct mammals with a disclaimer that scientists are never sure whether they have discovered the earliest or the latest survivor of any given extinct species. At Wally's Beach, humans butchered a Camelops sometime around 13,300 years ago, but that does not mean that there aren't younger Camelops remains still buried that met their demise at the hands of Paleoindians. Only time and erosion will bring the truth to bear!  

 

In the passage below from SHADOWS on the TRAIL, three hunters from the Folsom tribe encounter two Camelops.  

 

The larger of the two bull camels stopped at the edge of the mudhole and swiveled his large slender head around on an elongated neck. The camel’s eyes searched for movement while the disproportionately small ears fluttered back and forth, listening for danger. The smaller bull sniffed the edge of the mudhole with huge nostrils, searching for the scent from predators. Each camel took a long, ungainly step into the swampy muck. The camels gazed around, nervously chewing their cuds. Camels were not the savviest beasts around, but millions of years of evolution had taught them to survive. 

The larger bull stepped deeper into the gooey bog. His gangly front legs sank deeper into the muck. Not wanting to go any further, the larger camel stretched his long neck to reach the mud puddle. 

Hidden behind a small grove of cottonwood trees, three hunters waited for the two beasts to become mired in the sticky mess. Each hunter carried several smaller spear foreshafts, a main spear shaft, and a spear thrower or atlatl. A spear thrower or atlatl was an old-world invention that added length to the throwing arm, therefore increasing the velocity of a thrown spear. 

      

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The family Camelidae, comprising camels and llamas, originated in North America during the Eocene Epoch around 45 million years ago. The camel and llama lineages diverged about 17 million years ago, and then around 7 million years ago, camels crossed the Bering Strait into Asia (Buchholz 2021). 

The genus Camelops appeared in North America during the late Pliocene between 5.3 and 2.6 million years ago, and went extinct around 13,300 years ago (see my discussion above on Wally's Beach).  

Figure 3 - Artists' depiction of mother and 

baby Camelops. Image courtesy of 

naturalhistoryexplorer.com 

Camelops was one of six genera in the family Camelidae in North America and existed in the western part of North America, while llamas existed from coast to coast. Since soft tissue is not preserved in the fossil record, scientists are unsure whether Camelops had humps like modern-day camels or looked more like their distant relative: the llama.

Camelops was a physically imposing beast, standing seven feet tall at its shoulders and weighing around 1800 lbs. (800 kg.). Scientists believe it was both a browser and a grazer. Hunting them on foot with spears in the Pleistocene must have been quite a challenge. If anything like modern-day camels, Camelops could have easily outrun its human predators. Ambushing or trapping the beasts in some kind of natural or manmade enclosure would have been the only way for humans to stack the deck in their favor.        

Both camels and llamas were common in North America until the end of the Pleistocene, when they and other large mammals went extinct. In my opinion, there was no single reason for the extinction of camels, llamas, and other megafauna species at the end of the Pleistocene. Human predation and climate change appear to be the most cited reasons for the megafauna extinction. With long pregnancies and wide interbirth intervals, Paleoindians hunting the megafauna just aggravated an already tenuous survival situation.  

 Figure 4 - A paper-thin Folsom spear or dart point. This is 
projectile point type the Folsom People would have made
  and used in SHADOWS on the TRAIL. 
John Bradford Branney Collection.

                                     

2021    Buchholz, Pete

            The Last Camels of North America. Earth Archives. 

2009    Haynes, Gary      

            American Megafaunal Extinctions at the End of the Pleistocene. Vertebrate                            Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology Series. Springer Science. 

2015     Waters, Michael R., Thomas W. Stafford Jr., Brian Kooyman, and L.V. Hills   

             Late Pleistocene horse and camel hunting at the southern margin of the ice-free                    corridor: Reassessing the age of Wally’s Beach, Canada. PNAS, volume 114,                         number 14. 

                                                   
           

The historical fiction novels written by John Bradford Branney are known for their impeccable research and biting realism. In his eleventh blockbuster novel, BEYOND the CAMPFIRE, Branney catapults his readers back to the Pleistocene.  

John Bradford Branney holds a geology degree from the University of Wyoming and MBA from the University of Colorado.