Camels in Kansas?

[Xentor]

Ancient Mammoth and Camel Bones Found in Kansas
By Associated Press
posted: 15 February 2005

http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/ap_ancient_bones_050215.html


(...) the bones are between 12,200 and 12,300 years old, which could mean humans lived on the Great Plains 1,300 years earlier than previously thought.

[Ben Gruagach]

Well, llamas (used as working animals in South America) are related to camels so it doesn't surprise me that perhaps camels themselves lived in the Americas at one time.

[MoonDragn]

*pictures them migrating over the strait to russia and the middle east...*

"Hey bud, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore"

[Lunacie]

Even odder than camels in Kansas was that the university waited 25 years before deciding to investigate further. It's also amazing that the landowner discovered the bones in the first place. Ever seen the movie "Dances With Wolves"? That's what the countryside looks like in northwest Kansas, mostly pastureland for free-range cattle.

[Laisrean]

http://www.lam.mus.ca.us/cats/encyclo/atrox/

There were also Lions in America at one time.

[iaphoenix]

And horses largely evolved in North America. Frankly, not too much surprises me about this anymore. Animals are capable of a great deal. I think a lot of it has to do with their never having invented the clock, but that's another forum.

[phyrefly]

All horses and camels originated in North America. The refugia of the giant camel, Megalotylopus, includes areas in Oregon, Washington, and Nebraska. Giant camel teeth have been found in the gravel of the upper reaches of the Rio Grande. These animals stood 16 feet tall and ate out of trees like a giraffe. The migrations of the proto-camel went both over(westward) Beringia and down into South America, where there they became vicunas, guanacos, llamas, etc. Bactrain two-hump evolved from these, and is depicted on petroglyphs along the Lena River in Yakutia. Fossil evidence shows that llamas found a dead-end in Florida.

[Ben Gruagach]

And horses largely evolved in North America. Frankly, not too much surprises me about this anymore. Animals are capable of a great deal. I think a lot of it has to do with their never having invented the clock, but that's another forum.

While horses probably did originally evolve in North America, didn't they die out here before humans came to the continent?

I thought I read somewhere that the First Nations people who lived in the Americas didn't have horses until the Europeans brought them over. Does anyone know if this is true?

[Laisrean]

While horses probably did originally evolve in North America, didn't they die out here before humans came to the continent?

I thought I read somewhere that the First Nations people who lived in the Americas didn't have horses until the Europeans brought them over. Does anyone know if this is true?

It is true. I think that horses and humans did exist together on the American continent for awhile, though, but the humans probably hunted them to extinction having not understood the value in domesticating them. The same is true of the camels, the mammoths, and etc. All of those probably could have been domesticated but instead they were hunted as food to extinction.

Then Columbus came, and supposedly he released horses on to the continent and they've been here ever since.

[equinox2]

Laisrean’s right.

In fact, just a few short thousand years ago (a blink of the eye in geological time), your backyard was filled with huge mammals – giant wolves as big as an african lion, lions that make African lions look like housecats, giant rhino nearly 20 feet tall (weighing many tons), giant ground sloths, mammoths, mastodons, etc. Here are a couple great books on it:

http://www.thegreatstory.com/purchase_deep_time.html

(note – Connie & Michael travel around the country teaching evolution & scientifically accurate spirituality – so you can feel good supporting their “ministry” by buying from this page.)

The “Ghosts of evolution” shows that plants and animals co-evolve to work as a team where each member benefits (so fruit evolves to entice animals to eat it, and spread it’s seeds in the droppings). Because you can look at a fruit and see what kind of animal it has evolved to attract, you can see these partnerships even in areas like north America, where there are a bunch of fruits that are clearly trying to entice big mammals, like mammoths, that are now long extinct. Hence, the “ghosts” that haunt these fruit trees on the streets of new york are the big mammals. WOW!

Other continents had these kings of “Megafauna” too – Asia, Australia, South America, etc. On Australia there used to be a 20 foot long monitor lizard and a giant CARNIVOROUS kangaroo! In all cases, it appears that they all went extinct when the humans arrived and hunted them to extinction. Thus, horses evolved on N.A., but were killed off and reintroduced with Columbus.

-Equinox, who now sees ghostly mastodon whenever he sees an Osage Orange tree.

[iaphoenix]

[QUOTE=Laisrean]It is true. I think that horses and humans did exist together on the American continent for awhile, though, but the humans probably hunted them to extinction having not understood the value in domesticating them. The same is true of the camels, the mammoths, and etc. All of those probably could have been domesticated but instead they were hunted as food to extinction.
[QUOTE]


I'm not sure if they were on the continent at the same time or not. If not, they certainly passed each other along the way. But remember that horses were really quite small at the time. I'm not sure there would have been much benefit in domesticating them at that time.