- Science
- Laelaps
The Giant Camels of the Prehistoric High Arctic
Fossils can be astonishingly beautiful testaments of evolution and prehistoric time. There are few things I like better than wandering a museum’s fossil hall, admiring the skeletal architecture of a sauropod’s neck or the polished curl of an ammonite’s shell. But many, many fossils are ugly, hopelessly broken pieces of organisms past. The showroom pieces in museum halls only represent the rare, visually-magnificent few; or at least animals that paleontologists can reconstruct to the point where the remains take on an appealing cast of near-vitality. Nevertheless, even fossil crumbs have stories to tell if we know how to draw them out. One such skeletal remnant has just revealed the presence of an enormous camel that wandered forests of Canada’s High