Nearly forty years after discovery, an old bone teaches scientists new tricks
Aug 25, 2025, 3:22 PM
In March, scientists and volunteers rushed to excavate a fossil-rich quarry at the Dinosaur Discovery Site in St. George before it was scheduled to be turned into a power substation. (Mark Weaver/KSL TV)
(Mark Weaver/KSL TV)
SALT LAKE CITY — When you think of Camels, you may think of sandy, deserted locales. Places like Saudi Arabia, Africa, or the desert regions of Asia, like the Gobi Desert or the steppes of Mongolia.
However, evidence was recently found of a long-extinct ancestor to modern camels living in the Utah area, discovered with recent radiocarbon dating, according to a press release from the Utah Department of Natural Resources.
The release states that a tibia, or shin bone, belonging to an ice-age era camel species was discovered in 1987 in the Vernal area, and identified as Camelops hesternus by Park Manager Alden Hamblin before being displayed at the Utah Field House for decades.
A 30,000-plus-year-old tibia belonging to a Camel, found near Vernal in 1987. (John Foster, Utah State Parks)
Some time recently, though a time frame is not explicitly given in the press release, a technique called radiocarbon dating was used to catalog how old the bone was, revealing its true age: 33,000 years.
“The only other dated Utah Camelops, and most of those in the region that have actually been radiometrically dated, are from less than 20,000 years ago, almost 10,000 years ago. We expected it to be from around 10,000 years ago, maybe 15,000 if we were lucky,” said Utah Field House Curator John Foster, in the press release.
According to an article from the University of Chicago, where radiocarbon dating began as an archeological practice, radiocarbon dating is the practice of measuring the approximate age of any kind of formerly living organism by measuring the amount of Carbon-14, an isotope of Carbon absorbed by all living creatures.
According to that article, Carbon-14 absorption stops once an organism dies, and by measuring the amount of Carbon-14 remaining in that organism’s tissues or fossils, scientists can then approximate how long a creature has been dead, due to the natural radioactive decay of Carbon-14, according to Britannica.
The unnamed Camelops hesternus’ age indicates that the camel resided in Utah during the last glacial maximum, which would have resulted in a “noticeably colder and wetter” Utah, according to the release.
The release also states that Camels were formerly a common member of North America’s ecosystem, up until geologically recent times.
