Camelops - Extinction

Extinction

The last species of Camelops are hypothesized to have disappeared as a result of the Blitzkrieg model. This model presents the hypothesis that Camelops, along with other North American megafauna, disappeared as the result of North American hunters moving southeastward. The result of movement of humans and the growth of the human population was the reduction in prey ranges for the megafauna. Of the many Camelops specimens recovered in North America, mostly in the Wisconsin region, only a small amount demonstrate modification through human actions. However some have been interpreted as having been killed by humans based on spirally fractured bone fragments. None of the reported Camelops sites have been associated with stone tools, which would be an indicator of possibly human utilization.

At many of these Camelops sites, there were no fossils of carcasses that were evidently processed, but rather small fragments and pieces of remains. Researchers originally thought that Camelops were in fact hunted and butchered by early humans in North America because of the following four reasons: the fragmenting of bones into shapes that look like tools, damage or weathering of the “working” edge of said tools, having attributes that were similar to the making of chopping tools, and scarred fragments from a possible chopping tools. Further examination showed however that these assumptions were misguided, and that while humans did coexist and associate with Camelops, human utilization has yet to be completely proven as the sole cause of extinction.