This Week in Science: Alice the Camel had a Parka?

Well, the Twittersphere was abuzz today with articles about fossil evidence in the high arctic, suggesting CAMELS once roamed Ellesmere Island!

Free creative commons image from Wikipedia

CBC has two articles on the find: here and here.

And there's a photo slide show of the discovery here.

But the best resources (including a video!) are here, from the Canadian Museum of Nature, whose team made the discovery. 


According to the news feeds, the fossils are from 3.5 million years ago, when Ellesmere was quite a bit warmer.  Also, the camels were much larger than today's camels.  But they're not the only camels found in the north: camels were know in the Yukon region as well.

Canadian Museum of Nature Educational Resources
For the educators on the other side of the screen, the Canadian Museum of Nature's website (http://nature.ca) has a great set of resources for the classroom, including teaching kits, classroom activities, and interactive learning modules online. This link is a great starting point.