Robert Erhardt, age 12, of San Diego, California, for his question:

Is it true that we once had camels in our American deserts?

Oh yes, indeed. In fact, the camels have made two appearances on the North American scene. They were present in vast herds many millions of years in the past, and they appeared again in the last century. In 1899 the last of them met a sorry end in the Southwestern desert.

The first camels of North America did not resemble today's haughty, humped camel of the Old World deserts. Only their crumpled, fossilized bones remain in rocky sediments of the prairies. They were humpless, deer sized creatures, but zoologists, who classify animals on basic features such as skeletons, assure us that they were true camels. They were, in fact, the early ancestors of the camel family, Camelidae. The large Old World camels and their smaller llama cousins of South America all are descended from these early ancestors who got their start in North America.

In Sioux County Nebraska, crowded fossils are found in many rocky deposits. A quarry near Agate Springs held the bones of about 50 early camels. The age of the quarry proves that these animals lived between 40 and 50 million years ago. When the delicate bones were pieced together, the skeletons showed that they were graceful, long legged, long necked deer type animals. Those old timers are called gazelle camels. Their crowded fossils suggest that the herd perished in a swift landslide or some other sudden and violent disaster. But we have no idea what tragic disaster struck later and wiped out the entire camel population of North America.

There were no native camels, large or small, in North America when the settlers arrived. But in the 1800's, somebody thought that the hard working camels of the Old World deserts could perform useful chores in our Southwestern deserts. The Congress appropriated $30,000 to try out the experiment. A cargo of 33 camels was loaded on the ship Supply in Smyrna and on February 15, 1856, they disembarked in the homeland of their ancestors. Other government shipments arrived later. The camels were sent to garrisons and settlements on the Southwestern frontier. Operators of the famous Comstock Mine and other businesses also began importing Old World camels to work on our prairies and deserts.

Perhaps the frontiersmen also should have imported some Old World camel drivers who knew the tricky skills of handling the big animals. In any case, the clever camel adoption plans failed. Many camels were turned loose or they escaped and the animals quickly made themselves at home in our deserts. Unfortunately, they helped themselves to precious crops, scared the native animals and stampeded the horses. They became unpopular general nuisances and Nevada passed laws against the stray camels. They were shot on sight. The last of these Old World emigrants is said to have met his doom near Yuma, Arizona in 1899 and his body was eaten by Indians.

There is, of course, a mysterious gap in the camel story. The original camels were native North Americans and none of them survived. Yet an assortment of small, llama type camels thrive in South America and whopping camels are at home in Asia. Experts suggest that ages ago some of our early native camels strayed down to South America and others crossed a land bridge into Asia. These wanderers settled and prospered in their new homes. Meantime the ancestral camel family of North America met a mysterious disaster that wiped them from their original homeland.