‘End of the Megafauna’ examines why so many giant Ice Age animals went extinct
New book's colorful illustrations also offer perspective of just how large these creatures were
By Erin Wayman
End of the Megafauna
Ross D.E. MacPhee and Peter Schouten (illustrator)
W.W. Norton & Co., $35
Today’s land animals are a bunch of runts compared with creatures from the not-too-distant past. Beasts as big as elephants, gorillas and bears were once much more common around the world. Then, seemingly suddenly, hundreds of big species, including the woolly mammoth, the giant ground sloth and a lizard weighing as much as half a ton, disappeared. In End of the Megafauna, paleomammalogist Ross MacPhee makes one thing clear: The science on what caused the extinctions of these megafauna — animals larger than 44 kilograms, or about 100 pounds — is far from settled.