A joint team of Swiss and Syrian archaeologists working deep within Syria’s arid Palmyra desert claim to have uncovered the remains of a giant camel that lived 100,000 years ago and once stood “as big as a giraffe or an elephant”.
Researchers at the University of Basel first came across a set of extraordinarily large bones three years ago whilst excavating in the El Kowm area, 250km north of the capital Damascus, but were only able to confirm the remains came from a camel once further fragments were found this summer. “We found the first traces of a big animal in 2003, but we were not sure if it was a giant camel,” Jean-Marie Le Tensorer, a pre-history professor at the University of Basel, told Reuters. “This is a big discovery, a revolution in science.”
Sources:
Unison.ie: Archaeologists find bones of giant camel
Bones of giant camel dating back 100,000 years discovered in Syrian desert
