PHOENIX, Arizona (AP) -- Workers digging at the site of a future Wal-Mart store in suburban Mesa have unearthed the bones of a prehistoric camel that's estimated to be about 10,000 years old.

Arizona State University geology museum curator Brad Archer hurried out to the site 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 told The Arizona Republic.

Wal-Mart officials and Greenfield Citrus Nursery owner John Babiarz have already agreed that the bones will go directly on display at ASU.

Archer said some of them may be placed on display very soon, but most will take several months "to get sorted out and stabilized."

"In my 15 years at ASU doing this work I can think of six or seven times when finds this important have been made," Archer said. "This is the first camel. Others have been horses, once a mammoth on Happy Valley Road. This sort of thing is extremely rare."

So camels really were native to North America!

That is an interesting clip of an article you got there. Looks like a prehistoric find if you ask me! Ten thousand years, can you believe it? It’s amazing how something can be around for such a long period of time. Wal-Mart, made a great decision handing over these ancient bones to the ASU is my opinion, when they could have easily claimed them. Defiantly, an extremely rare find.

JJO

I thought it was pretty cool. I would love to see a picture of the skeleton all put together and standing. It would be amazing.

And yes, it was nice of Wal-Mart.

yea thats pretty cool actualy america used to be very similar to how we think of africa now we had camels lions cheetahs antelope mammoths instead of elephants and such its kinda cool to tihnk about

It is cool. We may not be able to time travel, but finding bones from so long ago at least give us glimpses of what the world and especially our continent was like.

Awsome. <333 That's totally cool. I have to agree with the dude. Extremely rare. I didn't know there was an "ancient camel" especially in this country. ;3

For some strange reason, Wal-mart construction sites tend to produce all kinds of finds, from prehistoric burial sites, habitation sites and paleontological sites. Here's just one of many examples: http://www.dickshovel.com/winch.html