Latest Pleistocene extinctions Stories
Researchers have discovered a bone fragment in Florida at least 13,000 years old with the incised image of a mammoth or mastodon, in what may be the first example of Ice Age art found in the Americas, scientists said on Wednesday.The artifact is the oldest and only known example of Ice Age art depicting a proboscidean (the order of animals with trunks) in the Western Hemisphere, the researchers said.Fossil hunter James Kennedy discovered the bone in Vero Beach, Florida, and noticed the...
An analysis of two ancient hominid species that roamed southern Africa more than a million years ago suggests that females left their childhood homes while males stayed at home, an international team of researchers said on Wednesday.The scientists studied teeth from a group of extinct Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus robustus individuals from two adjacent cave systems, and found that more than half of the female teeth were from outside the local area.By comparison, just 10 percent...
Researchers said that the woolly mammoth may have mated with a much larger elephant species. Woolly mammoths roamed the planet for over a million years, ranging from Europe to Asia to North America. Nearly all these mammals vanished from Siberia about 10,000 years ago, although dwarf mammoths survived until 3,700 years ago. Although woolly mammoths lived in the cold of the tundra, the Columbia mammoth preferred the more temperate regions of southern and central North America. "We are...
A scientist reported on Tuesday that a perfectly preserved skull of a mastodon was found in Chile during excavation work at a water treatment plant. "This is the remains of a gomphothere (mastodon) skull in optimal condition," paleontologist Rafael Labarca told AFP about the discovery of the animal, which had two to four tusks and died out 10,000 years ago.The remains were discovered on February 15 during work to expand a water treatment plant in Santiago by the French firm Suez and...
New research finds that the ancient pre-human known as "Nutcracker Man" did not dine on nuts after all, but instead dined on large quantities of grasses and sedges -- a discovery that upsets conventional wisdom about the diet of early humans."It most likely was eating grass, and most definitely was not cracking nuts," said University of Utah geochemist Thure Cerling, lead author of the study.The "Nutcracker Man", or Paranthropus boisei, is an ancient human relative that...
What was really on the menus of our ancestors?For human ancestors, eating could be hard work."Our ancestors were large creatures. With very low quality foods, without cooked foods, it's very likely that they would have spent a great deal more of their day eating than we do," says Peter Ungar, distinguished professor and chairman of anthropology at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.Ungar's work, understanding ancient diets, is a combination of anthropology, biology,...
Eight small teeth found in a cave near Rosh Haain, central Israel, are raising big questions about the earliest existence of humans and where we may have originated, says Binghamton University anthropologist Rolf Quam. Part of a team of international researchers led by Dr. Israel Hershovitz of Tel Aviv University, Qaum and his colleagues have been examining the dental discovery and recently published their joint findings in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Excavated at Qesem...
The extinct woolly mammoth could be brought back to life once again, if scientists at Japan's Kyoto University are successful in their attempts to clone the massive mammal using a tissue sample recovered from a mammoth carcass last summer. Akira Iritani, the head of the project and a professor emeritus at the university, told the daily Yomiuri Shimbun that "preparations"¦ have been made" to use cloning technology to produce a new mammoth from a tissue sample that had been preserved at a...
New research from The University of Western Ontario leads investigators to believe that woolly mammoths living north of the Arctic Circle during the Pleistocene Epoch (approx. 150,000 to 40,000 years ago) began weaning infants up to three years later than modern day African elephants due to prolonged hours of darkness. This adapted nursing pattern could have contributed to the prehistoric elephant's eventual extinction. The findings were published recently in the journal, Palaeogeography,...
New research published in the journal Science this week has determined that mammals grew larger following the extinction of dinosaurs, suggesting that they needed more space and better access to food resources in order to reach their full potential.The study, which was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and led by University of New Mexico (UNM) scientists, discovered that after dinosaurs died out some 65 million years ago, mammals began to grow, ultimately reaching sizes up to...
Latest Pleistocene extinctions Reference Libraries
Commonly known as the Eurasian cave lion or the European cave lion, Panthera leo spelaea is an extinct subspecies of lion. It is thought to have lived during the Pleistocene epoch, and may have lived in the Balkans in southeastern Europe until 2,000 years ago. The range of this cave lion would have included northwestern North America, Asia, and areas of Europe and would have extended from Germany, Spain, and Great Britain to the Yukon Territory. Its range also extended from Turkistan to...
The stag-moose (Cervalces scotti) is also known as the stag moose and was actually a deer that resembled a moose. It resided in North America during the Pleistocene era. Its range included New Jersey and Iowa, reach north from Arkansas to Southern Canada. It inhabited wetlands in these areas. This animal had long legs, a head resembling an elk, and huge, complex antlers. The stag-moose became extinct during the mass extinction of large mammals that occurred in the last Ice Age on North...
The shrub-ox (Euceratherium collinum) is a close relative of the modern musk-ox, and is an extinct member of the family Bovidae. It inhabited North America during the late Pleistocene, appearing before the first bovids entered North America from Eurasia. These muskoxen became extinct approximately 11,500 years ago. The shrub-ox was very large, approximately in between the sizes of a musk-ox and an American Bison. Research done on pellets left by these oxen shows that they browsed for food...
Harlan’s muskox (Bootherium bombifrons) is an extinct type of bovine, also known as the woodland muskox. It lived in North American during the late Pleistocene era, and was one of the most widely distributed oxen at that time. This bison died out around 11,000 years ago. Many fossils of Harlan’s muskox have been found in New Jersey, Texas, Oklahoma, Alaska, and California, including a nearly complete individual found in 1940. Three other types of muskoxen inhabited North America...
The steppe wisent (Bison priscus) or steppe bison was common to North America, Central Asia, Europe, and Beringia during the Quaternary period. It is thought that the steppe bison appeared around the same time as the aurochs , an extinct type of cattle, in Asia. Descendants of the steppe bison are often confused with the aurochs species. During the late Pleistocene era, the steppe wisent became extinct, giving rise to the modern wisent in Europe, and eventually the modern Bison in America....
