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When the glaciers receded in the late Pleistocene (also called the Ice Age), North America was home to dozens of thriving species of extra-large mammals known as megafauna.
In the meantime, researchers continue to find fossils of these massive creatures. Here's a look at 15 extinct animals from the last North American ice age, and what scientists know about their...
Know what the animals from the ice age are – how they adapted, their size comparison, list of ice age animals that became extinct and those that still exist.
Beringia’s ice-age (Pleistocene) iconic mega-fauna (mammals >100 lbs or 45 kg) included the mastodon (Mammut americanum), woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), woolly rhino (Coelodonta antiquitatis), lion (Panthera spelaea), and short-faced bear (Arctodus simus), all of which are now extinct.
1. Neanderthals. Our own species, Homo sapiens, emerged about 300,000 years ago, so persisted through the last ice age. We were not the only ancient humans around, however. Surviving the frigid temperatures along with us were our evolutionary cousins, the Neanderthals.
Ice Age Animals. Ice age Beringia was home to a diverse, and yet unique, mix of strange and familiar animals. During the cold glacial times, icons like the woolly mammoth, steppe bison and scimitar cat roamed the treeless plains alongside caribou, muskox and grizzly bears.
But humans living in ice age North America had to deal with the real thing. Dire wolves ( Canis dirus ) were a canine species that hunted the plains and forests.
By about 12,000 years ago, the ice sheets had significantly shrunk—and so had the Northern Hemisphere’s variety of large mammals. In North America, about five dozen kinds of mammals, big and small, went extinct as the ice slowly retreated.
The arctic woolly mammoth named Kik, one of the only Ice Age mammals whose life story is known in detail, was born approximately 17,100 years ago in the Alaskan interior, a region bounded by the...
What Types of Mammals Lived during the Ice Ages? During the Ice Ages, there were mammals that are very familiar to us like deer, pack rats, and ground squirrels. But there were also unusual mammals, most of them very large, that are now extinct.