CAMELS OF THE FOSSIL GENUS CAMELOPS. 



By Oliver P. Hay, 



Research Associate of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. 



One of the most interesting revelations furnished us by the study 

 of vertebrate paleontology is that our country was inhabited, still after 

 the beginning of the Pleistocene, by camels belonging to more than 

 one genus and to several species. Our knowledge of these species 

 has been meager enough, although the number named has not been 

 so restricted. Most of these species have been founded on such 

 scanty materials that comparisons among them could hardly be made 

 with any accuracy or certainty. In 1898* Doctor J. L. Wortman 

 considered the materials then available, and he ended by including 

 under the name Camelops Icansanus, given by Leidy in 1854, not only 

 the type of this species, but likewise Leidy's species Megalomeryx 

 niolrarensis and liis Calif ornian Auchenia hestem-a, Cope's Holomenis- 

 cus sulcatiis, and the specimens from Oregon and Texas which the 

 author just mentioned had described under the name of Holomenis- 

 cm Jiestermis, and Cragin's Auchenia fiuerfanensis, found in Colorado. 

 Camelops Icansanus had itself been based on a fragment of the snout, 

 consisting of portions of the left premaxilla and maxilla, wath the 

 root of an incisor and a part of the socket of a canine. This specimen 

 had been found in 1854, or previously, in what was described as 

 "gravel drift," somewhere within the present State of Kansas. 



Happily, these camels are beginning to emerge from the obscurity 

 which has enveloped them. That wonderful deposit of remains of 

 Pleistocene vertebrates, the asphalt beds of Rancho La Brea, near 

 Los Angeles, California, has furnished to Doctor John C. Merriam a 

 few complete skulls and the greater part of the skeleton of one, pos- 

 sibly of two, species of camels. The skulls are described by him in a 

 paper recently issued. ^ Two complete skulls are figured, of which one 

 is identified as representing the species which Leidy called Auchenia 

 liesterna, the other as being near this species and probably belonging 

 to it. Merriam accepts Wortman's conclusion that these camels are 



1 Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., vol. 10, p. 93. 



2 Univ. California Publ., Geol., vol. 7, pp. 305-323, fig.s. l-ll. 



Proceedings U. S. National Museum, Vol. 46-No. 2025. 



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