The long-necked Macrauchenia was a mysterious South American giant that baffled Charles Darwin.

Nature · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Discovered by Charles Darwin in 1834, this camel-like creature was a true evolutionary outlier. With a retracted nasal opening atop its skull and three-toed feet, Macrauchenia belonged to a distinct order of native South American ungulates that vanished alongside the continent's other megafauna around 12,000 years ago.

Macrauchenia patachonica was a massive herbivore, weighing roughly 1,000 kilograms, that roamed the Southern Cone of South America. It belonged to the Litopterna order, a group of native ungulates that evolved in isolation for over 60 million years before the Great American Interchange brought living ungulates to the continent. Its physical appearance was deceptive; while it possessed a long, flexible neck and a camel-like body, genetic analysis of mitochondrial DNA and collagen sequences suggests its closest living relatives are actually members of the order Perissodactyla, such as rhinoceroses and tapirs.

The creature's most striking feature is its skull, which features a nasal opening positioned between the eye sockets. While 19th-century anatomist Richard Owen and others historically hypothesized this indicated a tapir-like trunk, modern researchers are more skeptical. Current theories suggest the structure may have supported a moose-like prehensile lip or a specialized nasal organ designed to filter dust in the arid, open environments the animal inhabited. Its teeth, totaling 44, were low-crowned and continuous, suggesting a mixed diet of woody vegetation and C3 grasses.

Macrauchenia was a capable runner, likely using a digitigrade stance to move swiftly across the landscape. It lived in herds and was a frequent target for the apex predator Smilodon populator. Its extinction, occurring between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago, remains a subject of intense debate. While evidence of human interaction—such as stone tools and burned bones found at sites like Paso Otero 5—suggests that early humans in the Americas may have hunted or utilized these animals, the exact impact of human activity versus climatic shifts during the end-Pleistocene extinction event remains contested.

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