Real Monsters and Mega Beasts

The last Ice Age saw man as a new arrival in North America. When he finally got here he witnessed awe inspiring and fearful creatures nearly everywhere he looked. Giant mammoths and rhinos grazed at the edges of the ice sheets and fell prey to huge predators.

The first Americans found a landscape teeming with life. Giant mammoths, mastodons bison and giant deer all were easily hunted because the had no fear of human hunters. Sloths twenty feet tall shared ice age forests with giant armadillo like glyptodonts and monstrously big dire wolves.

The best available data places man's arrival in North America no earlier than about 14,000 years ago. By twelve thousand years ago nearly all the North American mega fauna were gone.The Clovis people disappeared from the archeological record during this time also. There is a great deal of speculation over the mysterious disappearance of both the mega beasts and the Clovis who hunted them.

Could the ice age giants all gone extinct because of human hunting?

Mega-Extinction

Some experts think that human hunting contributed to the final extinction of many of the giant animals of the ice age. Others blame the extinction event on climate change, comet impact or a combination of all these factors. The end result is that North America is a land with greatly reduced wildlife diversity and the trend is continuing as more species die out due to pollution and habitat loss.

Mega Beasts of the Forests and Grasslands

The largest bears and lions that ever lived stalked mammoth, mastodons and giant armadillos the size of a compact car.

In the forests glyptodonts grazed and 20 foot tall ground sloths nibbled the tops of trees. Out on the grasslands other fearsome creatures roamed. Giant bison and elk herds darkened the plain as giant cave lions and dire wolves tall as a man stalked them.

Most of the animals the first Americans found soon became items on the prehistoric menu as Clovis people moved across the continent. Mammoth, giant bison and huge ground sloths all fell to these ice age hunters. Some, like the giant short-faced bear and dire wolf added us to their menu as well.

If you would like to learn more about Ice Age predators take a look at the Hub Dire Wolves-Mega Predators. These giant wolves hunted across North America for hundreds of thousands of years but disappeared mysteriously 12,000 years ago.

The Monsters and Mega Beasts are Gone

You can take part in preventing the loss of wildlife diversity right in your own community. Encourage your family and neighbors to be conscious of how they use energy and resources. Conserve, reuse and recycle to reduce your impact on the environment. This creates less demand for endangered resources and energy and that helps reduce human encroachment into the wild places. Speak up and promote careful wildlife conservation in your state and region. The real monsters and mega beasts are gone-you can make a difference to preserve the wildlife that is left.