![]() (Indeed, on Flores Island there were giant storks, giant rats, giant lizards, and dwarf Stegodon:Īn odd community). Rhinos, and deer which died out, as well as the giant orangutan relative Gigantopithecus and (the woolly mammoth: also in North America) and Coelodonta antiquitatus (the woolly rhino), there was the giant Irish elk ( Megaloceros giganteus), the cave lion ( Panthera spelea), the cave bear ( Ursus speleus), and Homo neanderthalensis.Įast Asia, Southeast Asia, and Indonesia: Less well studied than many other regions, there were local mammoths and other proboscideans So very littleĮvidence for a Quaternary Period extinction among carnivores and herbivores from the continent of humanity's birth.īoreal Eurasia: In addition to Mammuthus primigenius So if the Ice Age itself didn't wipe out these large animals ( megafauna), than what did?Īfrica: Essentially modern composition of the animal life in the Pleistocene (indeed, nearly modern in the Pliocene). Indeed, we have paintings from humans who Furthermore, Charles Lyell and others established that humans co-existed (and even Early paleontologists such as Louis Agassiz thought that these species existed before the rise of humans, and were wiped out by the beginning of the Ice Age.īut as the fossil record improved, it was discovered that rather than a single "Ice Age" there were multiple advances and retreats of the ice,Īnd these giant animals lived throughout this interval. (the various mammoth species) Mammut (the mastodon) Coelodonta (the woolly rhino) Megatherium and other giant ground sloths Diprotodon, a giant wombat of Australia Toxodon, a giant placental mammal of South America and so on. ![]() Some of the first fossils found and named by paleontologists were giant mammals and birds from the very youngest geologic past: Mammuthus Ice Age Mammals and the Antiquity of Humans Not any black hole, mind you, but that very discerning one lying between nose and chin on the Clovis physiognomy." - The Eternal Frontier, Tim Flannery (2001)īIG QUESTION: What happened to the Pleistocene megafauna? I subscribe to the black hole theory of extinction, which suggests that at the end of the Pleistocene all of those huge mammoths, sloths, camels and mastodons disappeared into a black hole. "On one side are those who argue for a climatic cause, while on the other are those who hold human hunting to be responsible. The Call of Distant Mammoths: The Pleistocene Megafaunal Extinctions ![]() The Fossil Record of Vanished Worlds of the Prehistoric Past GEOL 204 Dinosaurs, Early Humans, Ancestors & Evolution: ![]()
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