Procamelus
Procamelus is an extinct genus of camel endemic to North America. It lived from the Middle to Late Miocene 16.3—5.3 mya, existing for approximately 11 million years. The name is derived from the Greek πρό, meaning "before" or denoting priority of order, and κάμελος ("camel"), thus meaning "fore-camel", "early camel" or "predecessor camel".

Jonathan Chen · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- LaminiPBDB
- Diet
- browserPBDB
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Camelidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Artiodactyla
Time the record covers
At least 14 million years on record.
The record covers at least 16.3 Mya to 1.4 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 23.04 Mya to 210 ka.
97 occurrences of Procamelus on record, most of them in the Miocene. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
97 occurrences- Miocene97%
- Pliocene2%
- Pleistocene1%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
19 formations
- Valentine Formation · Ogallala Group22
- Ash Hollow Formation · Ogallala Group18
- Goliad Formation8
- Alachua Formation2
- Gracias Formation2
- Juntura Formation2
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The named rock units Procamelus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 30 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Procamelus and its relatives
MioceneWhere Procamelus and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
724 taxa- Hippotherium26 sites
- Teleoceras25 sites
- Gomphotherium22 sites
- Aepycamelus19 sites
- Archaeolaginae19 sites
- Teleoceras major19 sites
- Leptocyon vafer18 sites
- Cosoryx furcatus17 sites
- Equini16 sites
- Mylagaulidae16 sites
- Hipparionini15 sites
- Pliohippus pernix15 sites
- Pseudhipparion gratum15 sites
- Aelurodon ferox14 sites
- Calippus placidus14 sites
- Longirostromeryx wellsi14 sites
- Eucastor tortus13 sites
- Merychyus13 sites
- Ustatochoerus medius13 sites
- Cupidinimus nebraskensis12 sites
- Domninoides valentinensis12 sites
- Pliohippus12 sites
- Pseudhipparion retrusum12 sites
- Epicyon saevus11 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 95 sites for Procamelus, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
42 references- Vertebrate biostratigraphy of the Ogallala Group in Nebraska26
- The Burge and Minnechaduza Clarendonian Mammalian Faunas of North-Central Nebraska13
- Miocene and Pliocene Artiodactyls, Texas Gulf Coastal Plain6
- Stratigraphy and mammalian paleontology of the Ash Hollow Formation (upper Miocene) on the north shore of Lake McConaughy, Keith County, Nebraska3
- Late Cenozoic Vertebrates from Honduras and El Salvador3
- Stratigraphy and biostratigraphy of late Cenozoic deposits in central Sioux County, western Nebraska3
- Synonymies and reidentifications of North American fossil mammals2
- Stop 15: Early Hemphillian faunas of the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles2
- Sedimentary Facies and Biochronology of the Upper Tertiary Ogallala Group, Blanco and Yellow House Canyons, Texas Panhandle2
- A contribution to the mammalian paleontology of the Ogallala group of South-Central South Dakota2
- Mammalian fauna of the Upper Juntura formation, the Black Butte local fauna2
- Catalogue of Tertiary Fossil Sites of the Land Mammals in the U.S.S.R.2
Each of the 97 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 30 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Procamelus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Jonathan Chen
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
Laser scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Procamelus grandis · amnh:fm:40425
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Procamelus”
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itLamini through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Leidy 1858