I Delayed

I wanted to find a good article today so I delayed, and delayed, and delayed It didn't work very well on account of the fact that it just clearly is not going to magically rain Camelops or Castoroides papers, articles, or scholarly research in the next few hours. There was a paper I was interested in and thought I could read through fairly easily. Unfortunately it was no longer hosted despite being linked. Checking later, however, I realized there was a hosting for it somewhere, and this made me very happy.

The article is entitled On the Possible Utilization of Camelops by Early Man in North America. Hearing that there were once camels of any sort in North America my first reaction was something to the tone of "why do we not still have camels OR horses natively in North America?" (horses having gone extinct natively on our continent around the time the camelids did). How could man not have learned to domestic them and utilize their potential to maximize man's? I always wondered this and the fact that someone has gone back, though it was 1983 when this paper was published, and contemplated and discussed what man may have done in terms of interactions I was very intrigued to read about. I do not at all advocate the idea of advancing mankind at the expense of the indigenous fauna but it seems to me that the camels could still exist naturally on our continent had they been raised and bred to aid mankind just as dogs, cats, cattle, and even the reintroduced horse have. I don't think I'll give away any of the discussions this article explores, but should anyone wish to discuss it, leave some comments.

There was a second Camelops paper entitled Problems in the nomenclature of North American Pleistocene camels as well. I admit that I did not read this paper, however, the 1992 Finnish article by Walter Dalquest examines not only Camelops but four other genera of North American Pleistocene camelids and the difficulties in identifying and naming the camelids accurately and without significant confusion.

I found one Castoroides article that I very much wanted to read but could not find a full copy of. The article was about Castoroides remains found in Arkansas, which, being where I now live, I have a great interest in. I would love to stumble upon a great big Castoroides skull sometime when I'm out taking photos, but I doubt I will any time soon. For interested parties that article's front page can be found on JSTOR at the following link: Castoroides ohioensis in Arkansas.