Hemiauchenia Fossil Tooth Prehistoric Llama Megafauna Pleistocene Quaternary Collection

Rare ! Fossil Tooth Prehistoric long legged Llama mm 32 x 25 x 20 - gr 14.7 Hemiauchenia macrocephala Megafauna Extinct Artiodactyl Mammals Pleistocene Quaternary Collecting Paleontology Museum.

Remarkable collectible fossil find of good quality, well preserved, with clear details of the enamelled cusps of the crown and the root. Only a piece, as in photos.

Hemiauchenia is a genus of laminoid camelids that evolved in North America in the Miocene period about 10 million years ago. This genus diversified and moved to South America in the late Pliocene about 3-2 million years ago, as part of the Great American Biotic Interchange, giving rise to modern llamas. The genus became extinct at the end of the Pleistocene.
Remains of these species have been found in assorted locations in North America; in South America they are limited to the Pleistocene.
The "big-headed llama", H. macrocephala, was widely distributed in North and Central America. Native to the southern United States, its fossil remains are widespread from California to Florida and up to Nebraska. Also present in Mexico.
Compared to other species it has a larger skull, very long and robust limbs, a large skeleton, the presence of a second deciduous upper premolar, high-crowned molars, a thick layer of enamel on the teeth and a wide mandibular symphysis ( line where the jaw bones join) with vertical incisors.
It is believed to have been less closely related to modern Llamas and Vicuñas than other species, e.g. H. paradoxa.

Llamas belong to the Camelidae family and appear to have originated from the plains of North America around 40 million years ago. The Americas were the cradle of camelids, where they diversified and prospered, but they remained confined to the North American continent until 2-3 million years ago, when some representatives arrived in Asia and, after the formation of the Isthmus of Panama, also in South America. By the end of the last Ice Age (10,000-12,000 years ago) the camelid family became completely extinct in North America.
It is now known, therefore, that llamas were once not confined south of the Isthmus of Panama, as they are today, since numerous fossil remains have been found in Pleistocene deposits in the Rocky Mountains and in Central America. Several fossil llama specimens have been found to be much larger than modern llamas. Some species remained in North America during the last ice age and were classified as a single extinct genus, Hemiauchenia.
Three groups of species have survived to the present day: the Dromedary of North Africa and Southeast Asia, the Camel of Central Asia, and the South American group, which diversified into a series of closely related forms, but classified as four species: the Llama, Alpaca, Guanaco and Vicuña.