Scientists find ancient camel fossils in Panama

“Most of Panama was already up,” Jaramillo said. “It was like a mountain, so erosion was very intense. No sediment was left during that time period.”

Bruce Patterson, curator of mammals at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, said the camel finding shows Panama was clearly part of North America, because the species didn’t make it into South America until much later.

“In a sense it really enlarges the ecological envelop of the camel radiation to have them living in tropical rainforests and browsing,” Patterson said.

The camels are believed to have originated in Florida and Texas and then evolved as they moved southward.

By studying the teeth of the camels, scientists can determine what they ate. While the molars of today’s camels tend to be flat from grazing on grasses, the camels of Panama had more ridged teeth, indicating they were browsers that ate a variety of plant life. The species is now extinct in the Americas but researchers say they likely evolved into the llamas and guanacos now seen in the Andes.

“Probably the camels we see today in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, they come from these camels that were living in Panama,” Jaramillo said.

Rincon discovered the fossils in 2008 and uncovered pieces of a jaw belonging to one animal over the next two years. He said Wednesday that the remains had been covered in volcanic ash over time and were well preserved.

“It’s something like Pompeii,” he said, referring to the Roman city that was preserved when buried by a volcanic eruption thousands of years ago.

Rincon traveled back to the university in Gainesville, Fla., and began putting the pieces together. Many of the remains had a green coating from the volcanic ash that he had to carefully remove. Soon he realized he had nearly a complete jaw and that it belonged to a camel.

“I was excited,” the 33-year-old researcher said, adding he was surprised by their unusual teeth. “They have kind of crocodilian teeth. I’m still trying to understand” that.

In all, fossils from about five camels have been found. Four of the recovered jaws belong to the larger species, which bear many similarities but are different in size. The taller of the two likely stood no more than three feet tall.

Rincon and scientists from the U.S. and Panama are continuing to work under a grant from the National Science Foundation.

The researchers start each day early to avoid the sun’s strongest rays and get called to excavate sites as workers expanding the canal come across new discoveries. After about four years of field work, they have uncovered numerous trees, plants, frogs, rodents and crocodiles dating millions of years.

But camels hadn’t been discovered anywhere in Panama before.

“It’s something you don’t even dream about,” Jaramillo said.

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