NOTICE OF THE OCCURRENCE OF A PLEISTOCENE 

 CAMEL NORTH OF THE ARCTIC CIRCLE 



By JAMES WILLIAMS GIDLEY 



ASSISTANT CURATOR OF FOSSIL MAMMALS, U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM 



While collecting recent mammals for the L T . S. National Museum 

 during the summer of 1912, along the Yukon-Alaskan boundary, Mr. 

 Copeley Amory, Jr., Collaborator in Zoology, U. S. National 

 Museum, obtained a small lot of Pleistocene mammal bones from a lo- 

 cality about 50 miles from the mouth of Old Crow River, in the 

 Yukon Territory. This little collection proves to be of more than 

 ordinary interest and importance, since it contains one of the pha- 

 langes of a camel. The association of this specimen with isolated 

 foot bones and teeth of Elephas primigenius, Equus, and Bison, with 

 which it agrees exactly in color and degree of fossilization, pretty 

 definitely determines it as Pleistocene in age. 



The specimen in itself is insignificant, yet its presence in the col- 

 lection proves beyond question the former existence of camels in this 

 far north country. Hitherto the northern limit of their range in 

 America was not known to extend beyond the Silver Lake (Christ- 

 mas Lake), Oregon, locality, which place is but little north of the 

 43d parallel, although camels of several large species were very 

 abundant on this continent during both the Pliocene and Pleistocene 

 periods. 



The finding of camel remains in the Pleistocene deposits of the 

 Alaskan peninsula is not altogether unlooked for, but their occur- 

 rence so far within the Arctic Circle was scarcely to be expected. 

 This verification of their former presence in that region, therefore, 

 is of especial interest in that it vastly extends the known geographic 

 distribution of this important group of mammals in America during 

 the Pleistocene, while incidentally it adds proof in support of the 

 supposition that milder climatic conditions prevailed in Alaska dur- 

 ing probably the greater part of the Pleistocene period. It is also 

 one more bit of evidence confirming the theory of the existence of a 

 wide Asiatic-Alaskan land connection of comparatively recent date, 

 which for a very considerable length of time served as a great high- 

 way for the free transmigration of mammals between America and 

 the Old World. 



Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Vol. 60, No. 26 



