Name: When Camels Roamed the Arctic
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Some 2 million years ago, when the high Arctic was a much warmer, greener place, a unique collection of animals coexisted: Caribou, geese, hares, even camels.

The oldest DNA ever recovered revealed an ecosystem unlike anything that exists today.

When Camels Roamed the Arctic

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Some 2 million years ago, when the high Arctic was a much warmer, greener place, a unique collection of animals coexisted: Caribou, geese, hares, even camels.

The oldest DNA ever recovered revealed an ecosystem unlike anything that exists today.

Evolution

When Camels Roamed the ArcticPublished: March 28, 2024Beth Shapiro: A dramatic breakthrough is transporting is millions of years back into the past to before the last Ice Age, revealing surprising creatures that thrived when our planet was far warmer than it is today.Eske Willerslev: As if by magic, we were seeing the genetic signatures of these plants and animals appear. Bang, bang, bang, fleas, lemmings, Arctic hare, geese, caribou, a whole forest ecosystem. Large poplar, willow, spruce, ash, cedar trees. We are looking at a long list of organisms from a place that today is an Arctic desert.Beth Shapiro: But with the spectacular discovery of DNA from Greenland, finally, a detailed portrait of this lost world is emerging, and it's even stranger than scientists expected.Natalia Rybczynski: I think the thing that really blew our minds from the [inaudible 00:01:03] scene is the camel.Beth Shapiro: How could this camel known only by a few fragments of bone survive so far north? The living world revealed by the Greenland DNA gives us some clues.Natalia Rybczynski: When you think about camels today, it's really easy to imagine that they evolved to live in the desert, and this is where the finding of the High Arctic camel is so mind-blowing, because it's not in a desert. It's living a complete opposite to a desert. It's in a forest. Ever notice how huge a camel's eye is? Well, it turns out they have incredible vision, including night vision. That's pretty useful when it's dark six months of the year. One of the most dramatic features of the camel, it's the hump. It's actually a specialized fat deposit. When you think about the importance of fat energy storage, this is something that's also very important for animals that survive through harsh winters. The wide feet of camels, it's listed as one of the traits that helps them walk over sand, also would function well in soft snow.Eske Willerslev: We haven't found Camel DNA from before the Ice Age, not yet. But we have now recreated the forest world they were living in, and Natalia's fossils tells us they were there. This is a forest that's stretched from Greenland to Canada on solid land without barriers.Beth Shapiro: We used to believe that ancient DNA could take you back a few thousand years. Today, we know we can see millions of years back in time.

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When Camels Roamed the Arctic

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Explore More

Hunt for the Oldest DNA

Oldest DNA Ever Found Reveals Secrets of the Ancient Arctic

Arctic Sinkholes