AUTHOR=Klementiev Alexey M. , Khatsenovich Arina M. , Tserendagva Yadmaa , Rybin Evgeny P. , Bazargur Dashzeveg , Marchenko Daria V. , Gunchinsuren Byambaa , Derevianko Anatoly P. , Olsen John W. 

TITLE=First Documented Camelus knoblochi Nehring (1901) and Fossil Camelus ferus Przewalski (1878) From Late Pleistocene Archaeological Contexts in Mongolia

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Earth Science

VOLUME=10

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/earth-science/articles/10.3389/feart.2022.861163

DOI=10.3389/feart.2022.861163

ISSN=2296-6463

ABSTRACT=<p>Throughout the arid lands of Africa and Eurasia, camelids facilitated the expansion of human populations into areas that would not likely have been habitable without the transportation abilities of this animal along with the organic resources it provides, including dung, meat, milk, leather, wool, and bones. The two-humped, Bactrian, species of <italic>Camelus</italic>, <italic>C. ferus</italic> in its wild state and <italic>C. bactrianus</italic> when domesticated, is much more poorly known in prehistoric archaeological contexts than its single-humped congeneric, <italic>C. dromedarius</italic>. Our research uses a convergence of evidence approach to analyze reports and remains of Plio-Pleistocene camelids in Central and Northern Asia and trace the latest-known fossil Bactrian relative, <italic>Camelus knoblochi</italic>, that seems to have survived in the Gobi Desert until the Last Glacial Maximum (ca. 26.5–19 ka). Rock art depictions, some of which may be of Pleistocene age, record the complexity of nascent human-camel interactions and provide the impetus for further archaeological studies of both the origins of <italic>C. bactrianus</italic> and its increasingly complex relationships with the highly mobile prehistoric peoples of Central and Northern Asia.</p>