Vanished Giants: The Lost World of the Ice Age

Featuring numerous illustrations, this book explores the many lessons to be learned from Pleistocene megafauna, including the role of humans in their extinction, their disappearance at the start of the Sixth Extinction, and what they might teach us about contemporary conservation crises.

Long after the extinction of dinosaurs, when humans were still in the Stone Age, woolly rhinos, mammoths, mastodons, sabertooth cats, giant ground sloths, and many other spectacular large animals that are no longer with us roamed the Earth. These animals are regarded as "Pleistocene megafauna," named for the geological era in which they lived--also known as the Ice Age.

In Vanished Giants: The Lost World of the Ice Age, paleontologist Anthony J. Stuart explores the lives and environments of these animals, moving between six continents and several key islands. Stuart examines the animals themselves via what we've learned from fossil remains, and he describes the landscapes, climates, vegetation, ecological interactions, and other aspects of the animals' existence. Illustrated throughout, Vanished Giants also offers a picture of the world as it was tens of thousands of years ago when these giants still existed. Unlike the case of the dinosaurs, there was no asteroid strike to blame for the end of their world. Instead, it appears that the giants of the Ice Age were driven to extinction by climate change, human activities--especially hunting--or both. Drawing on the latest evidence provided by radiocarbon dating, Stuart discusses these possibilities. The extinction of Ice Age megafauna can be seen as the beginning of the so-called Sixth Extinction, which is happening right now. This has important implications for understanding the likely fate of present-day animals in the face of contemporary climate change and vastly increasing human populations.

ISBN-13: 9780226824031

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Publication Date: 08-20-2022

Pages: 288

Product Dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

For more than thirty years, Anthony J. Stuart has focused on the extinction of Ice Age megafauna and has published extensively in scientific journals such as Nature, Quaternary Science Reviews, and Quaternary International. He has also contributed to popular science publications including New Scientist, Geoscientist, Pour La Science, Spektrum der Wissenschaft, and Grizmek's Animal Life Encyclopedia and served as a consultant for the three-part BBC series Ice Age Giants.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction

2 Crises in the History of Life

3 The Ice Age and the Megafauna

4 Cold Case: The Search for the Ice Age Killer

5 Northern Eurasia: Woolly Rhinos, Cave Bears, and Giant Deer

6 North America: Mastodon, Ground Sloths, and Sabertooth Cats

7 South America: Ground Sloths and Glyptodonts

8 Sahul: Giant Marsupials, a Thunderbird, and a Huge Lizard

9 Madagascar: Giant Lemurs, Elephant Birds, and Dwarf Hippos

10 New Zealand: Land of the Moa

11 Island Megafauna

12 Megafaunal Survival: Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia

13 Summary and Conclusions: The Global Pattern of Megafaunal Extinctions

Acknowledgments
Appendix: Dating the Past
Notes
References
Index Show More