Today@Dal

From Thursday's Chronicle Herald:

WHAT’S THREE METRES TALL, has a hump and can handle six months of winter like it’s a walk on the beach?

A giant Arctic camel, that’s what.

A Dalhousie geologist helped show that some bones found in the High Arctic belonged to a camel that lived there 31/2 million years ago, when Canada’s North looked very different.

In 2008, John Gosse was up to his knees in sand on Ellesmere Island with scientists from the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa.

One of them, Natalia Rybczynski, came running over with a piece of bone in her hand, shouting and excited.

“She brought it over and said, ‘I think this is camel.’ And I thought she was joking, because how can a camel get up into the High Arctic?” said Gosse.

“Well, it turns out that it’s not really the camel that is different. It’s the Arctic that was different at that time.”

To read the rest of this article, visit the Chronicle Herald's website.