Camelus dromedarius Linnaeus, 1758

Peter Grubb, 1993, Order Artiodactyla, Mammal Species of the World (2 nd Edition), Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. 377-414 : 381

Camelus dromedarius Linnaeus, 1758 . Syst. Nat., 10th ed., 1:65 .

TYPE LOCALITY: "Africa," deserts of Libya and Arabia (domesticated stock) .

DISTRIBUTION: Extinct in the wild; first domesticated about 4,000 yr BP from wild populations which had become restricted to the S Arabian Peninsula; domesticated from Senegal and Mauritania to Somalia and Kenya, throughout N Africa, the Middle East, Arabia, and Iran to NW India; feral populations in Australia.

COMMENTS: Produces fertile hybrids with bactrianus (see comments therein). Bohlken (1961) considered dromedarius a synonym of bactrianus . Reviewed by Köhler-Rollefson (1991, Mammalian Species, 375). Biology reviewed by Gauthier-Pilters and Innis Dagg (1981). For history of domestication, see R. T. Wilson (1984).