09/21/2026
Aepycamelus was a genus of prehistoric camelid found in North America during the Miocene epoch, living approximately 20 to 5 million years ago. It had extraordinarily long legs and a long neck, reaching heights of approximately 3 to 3.5 meters, an adaptation for browsing on relatively high vegetation in a manner that convergently resembled the giraffe body plan.
Most people are unaware that camels originated in North America. The camel family, Camelidae, first appeared in North America approximately 45 million years ago. From there, some lineages crossed the Bering land bridge into Asia and eventually became the Old World camels alive today: dromedaries and Bactrians. Others crossed the Isthmus of Panama into South America and became llamas, alpacas, guanacos, and vicuñas. The North American camel lineage went extinct approximately 10,000 to 12,000 years ago during the late Pleistocene extinction, likely from a combination of climate change and human hunting pressure.
Every camel, llama, alpaca, guanaco, and vicuña alive today descends from animals that originated on a continent that no longer has any of them.
North America had a camel with a giraffe’s neck. Then it had no camels at all.
Illustration by Heinrich Harder
