Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jun 11, 2026

Camelini

Camelini is a tribe of camelids including all camelids more closely related to modern camels (Camelus) than to Lamini, from which camelines split approximately 17 million years ago. The tribe originated in North America, with the genus Paracamelus migrating over the Bering Land Bridge into Eurasia during the Late Miocene, around 6 million years ago, becoming ancestral to Camelus. The last member of Camelini in North America was Camelops, which became extinct as part of the Quaternary extinction event at the end of the Late Pleistocene, around 12,000 years ago.

Last revised
Jun 11, 2026
Read time
≈ 1 min
Length
331 w
Citations
7
Source
Camelini
Temporal range:
Camelus dromedarius
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Infraclass: Placentalia
Order: Artiodactyla
Family: Camelidae
Subfamily: Camelinae
Tribe: Camelini
Gray, 18211
Genera

Camelini is a tribe of camelids including all camelids more closely related to modern camels (Camelus) than to Lamini (which contains llamas, alpacas, vicuñas, and guanacos), from which camelines split approximately 17 million years ago.23 The tribe originated in North America, with the genus Paracamelus migrating over the Bering Land Bridge into Eurasia during the Late Miocene, around 6 million years ago, becoming ancestral to Camelus.456 The last member of Camelini in North America was Camelops, which became extinct as part of the Quaternary extinction event at the end of the Late Pleistocene, around 12,000 years ago.3

References

References

  1. McKenna, Malcolm Carnegie; Bell, Susan K. (1997). Classification of Mammals: Above the Species Level. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 631. ISBN 978-0-231-11013-6.
  2. Lynch, Sinéad; Sánchez-Villagra, Marcelo R.; Balcarcel, Ana (December 2020). "Description of a fossil camelid from the Pleistocene of Argentina, and a cladistic analysis of the Camelinae". Swiss Journal of Palaeontology. 139 (1): 5. doi:10.1186/s13358-020-00208-6. ISSN 1664-2376. PMC 7590954. PMID 33133011.
  3. Buckley, Michael; Lawless, Craig; Rybczynski, Natalia (March 2019). "Collagen sequence analysis of fossil camels, Camelops and c.f. Paracamelus, from the Arctic and sub-Arctic of Plio-Pleistocene North America". Journal of Proteomics. 194: 218–225. doi:10.1016/j.jprot.2018.11.014.
  4. Heintzman, Peter D.; Zazula, Grant D.; Cahill, James A.; Reyes, Alberto V.; MacPhee, Ross D.E.; Shapiro, Beth (September 2015). "Genomic Data from Extinct North American Camelops Revise Camel Evolutionary History". Molecular Biology and Evolution. 32 (9): 2433–2440. doi:10.1093/molbev/msv128. ISSN 0737-4038. PMID 26037535.
  5. Rybczynski, Natalia; Gosse, John C.; Richard Harington, C.; Wogelius, Roy A.; Hidy, Alan J.; Buckley, Mike (June 2013). "Mid-Pliocene warm-period deposits in the High Arctic yield insight into camel evolution". Nature Communications. 4 (1): 1550. Bibcode:2013NatCo...4.1550R. doi:10.1038/ncomms2516. ISSN 2041-1723. PMC 3615376. PMID 23462993.
  6. Singh; Tomar. Evolutionary Biology (8th revised ed.). New Delhi: Rastogi Publications. p. 334. ISBN 9788171336395.