PHOENIX ,USA - About 10,000-years-old prehistoric camel bones were discovered Friday on a site in suburban Mesa,Arizona,where a Wal-Mart will be built.
Workers have unearthed the bones estimated to be about 10,000 years old.
Arizona State University geology museum curator Brad Archer hurried out to the site on Friday when he got the news that the owner of a nursery was carefully excavating bones found at the bottom of a hole being dug for a new ornamental citrus tree.
"There's no question that this is a camel; these creatures walked the land here until about 8,000 years ago, when the same event that wiped out a great deal of mammal life took place," Archer said.
Arizona State University geology museum curator Brad Archer hurried out to the site on Friday when he got the news that the owner of a nursery was carefully excavating bones found at the bottom of a hole being dug for a new ornamental citrus tree.
"There's no question that this is a camel; these creatures walked the land here until about 8,000 years ago, when the same event that wiped out a great deal of mammal life took place," Archer said.
Wal-Mart officials and Greenfield Citrus Nursery owner John Babiarz have already agreed that the bones will go directly on display at Arizona State University .The museum also houses a startlingly lifelike 1.2 million-year-old saber-tooth tiger skeleton that was found in Florida in 1982.
"I just got the bug for this work and pursue it whenever I can," Babiarz said from the bottom of the 4-foot-deep hole where he was brushing dirt from around the backbones of the camel.
"Treasure is where you find it, and you have to learn to recognize it," he said. "I'm sure that every year across the Valley in construction sites, finds like we had here today have gone unnoticed. I'm very glad my crew is alert and let me know about this."
Babiarz said the find would not change the construction schedule at the Wal-Mart site.
"They have given us all weekend to get the bones excavated, and that's all we'll need," he said.
Some of the bones may be placed on display very soon, but most will take several months "to get sorted out and stabilized",Arizona State University geology museum curator Brad Archer said.
"In my 15 years at Arizona State University doing this work I can think of six or seven times when finds this important have been made.This is the first camel. Others have been horses, once a mammoth on Happy Valley Road. This sort of thing is extremely rare.",he said.
Camels, mammoths and enormous bears roamed North America 10,000-40,000 years ago. Arizona is considered a prime location for the fossil remains of post-dinosaur animals like giant camels, mammoths, mastadons and giant sloths.
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