{"id":240776,"date":"2025-02-17T13:51:27","date_gmt":"2025-02-17T13:51:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/17\/giant-camel-like-creatures-lived-thousands-of-years-longer-than-once\/"},"modified":"2025-02-17T13:51:27","modified_gmt":"2025-02-17T13:51:27","slug":"giant-camel-like-creatures-lived-thousands-of-years-longer-than-once","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/17\/giant-camel-like-creatures-lived-thousands-of-years-longer-than-once\/","title":{"rendered":"Giant camel-like creatures lived thousands of years longer than once"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/www.sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/MAR_014_25_A_598X336_option2_V02.png?ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Giant camel-like creatures lived thousands of years longer than once\" title=\"Giant camel-like creatures lived thousands of years longer than once\" \/><\/div> \r\n<br><div data-component=\"video-embed\">\n\t\t\t\t\n\n\n\n\n<p>Some species of megafauna might have existed for much longer than the paleontological canon suggests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Current thinking says that ancient, large animals such as ground sloths went extinct about 11,000 years ago \u2014 at the beginning of the Holocene, the current geologic epoch. The discovery of a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/last-woolly-mammoths-species-extinct\">4,000-year-old wooly mammoth<\/a>, reported last year, helped to chip away at that story. Now, other megafauna fossil finds from South America appear to be even younger: They date <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/abs\/pii\/S089598112500029X\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">from around 3,500 years ago<\/a>, researchers report in the Feb. 15 <em>Journal of South American Earth Sciences<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n<aside class=\"sn-conversion rich-text rich-text--with-sidebar\">\n<style><![CDATA[\n.email-conversion {\n  border: 1px solid #ffcccb;\n  color: white;\n  margin-top: 50px;\n  background-image: url(\"\/wp-content\/themes\/sciencenews\/client\/src\/images\/cta-module@2x.jpg\");\n  padding: 20px;\n  clear: both;\n}\n\n]]><\/style>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"rich-text embedded-conversion-content is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\">\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article-type\/deep-end-podcast?cta=top\">\n  <\/a><\/div><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article-type\/deep-end-podcast?cta=top\">\n<\/a>\n\n<style><![CDATA[\n#dynamic-conversion {\n  border: 1px solid #ffcccb;\n  max-width: 100%;\n  height: auto;\n  clear: both;\n}\n]]><\/style>\n\n\n\n\n<\/aside>\n\n\n<p>Geologist F\u00e1bio Faria and colleagues carbon-dated eight fragments of megafauna teeth of different species from two paleontological sites in Brazil. The ages of two of those teeth \u2014 one from the camelid <em>Palaeolama major<\/em> and the other from the camelid-like <em>Xenorhinotherium bahiense<\/em> \u2014 caught the team off guard. \u201cWith the dating, we wanted to better understand the distribution of ancient megafauna in South America. What we found \u2014 3,500-year-old species \u2014 was totally unexpected,\u201d says Faria, of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>P. major<\/em> is an ancient relative of today\u2019s llamas native to South America. <em>X. bahiense<\/em>, meanwhile, had the body of a llama and the nose of a tapir. The new finding suggests that these animals were in contact with humans \u2014 who arrived in South America between 20,000 and 17,000 years ago \u2014 for a few thousand years longer than once thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Previous research has noted other megafauna fossils around 6,000 and 5,000 years old in the American continent and elsewhere, says Dimila Moth\u00e9, a paleoecologist at the Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro who did not participate in the study. But the new finding, she says, \u201cis astonishing and opens the door to rewrite South American history.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The study adds more evidence to the idea that extinctions are rarely homogeneous, Moth\u00e9 says. As both fossils were found at the same site in northeastern Brazil, Moth\u00e9 believes the region might have been a refuge for remaining individuals of species such as <em>P. major<\/em> and <em>X. bahiense<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe environment in the Brazilian Intertropical Region was undergoing changes by that time,\u201d she says. \u201cOpen fields were turning into forests, and these animals might have had less area to graze and looked for refuge in the remaining savannah.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The animals\u2019 extinction might not have happened by human activity or climate change alone, Moth\u00e9 says. It might have been a confluence of both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To Faria, the discovery is a change of mind. Brazilian researchers used to adopt the North American view that megafauna were wiped out by overhunting. \u201cFollowing that dominant view, we were so sure our megafauna was from the beginning of the Holocene, we didn\u2019t even date our fossils,\u201d he says. Now, \u201cthere\u2019s a lot of work to do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n<br>\r\n<br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/giant-camel-creatures-fossil\">Source link <\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some species of megafauna might have existed for much longer than the paleontological canon suggests. Current thinking says that ancient, large animals such as ground sloths went extinct about 11,000 years ago \u2014 at the beginning of the Holocene, the current geologic epoch. The discovery of a 4,000-year-old wooly mammoth, reported last year, helped to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":240777,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/MAR_014_25_A_598X336_option2_V02.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[606],"tags":[187416,61845,596,15160,65,57,111],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240776"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240776"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":240778,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240776\/revisions\/240778"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}