"A ground sloth headed to a kelp forest in search of resources, but it didn't know that would be its last dive..." (Art by @CTS_YTDC2)
The ground sloth diving is Megalonyx
u/ExoticShock — 7 hours ago
r/pleistocene
A jaguar shortly after killing a large-headed llama ( Hemiauchenia macrocephala) on a shrubland in the late pleistocene Jalisco, Mexico
By me
u/ExoticShock — 7 hours ago
▲ 278 r/pleistocene
Some modern animals relics from the ice Age coexist with the Megafauna
u/Silent-System8295 — 22 hours ago
▲ 124 r/pleistocene
List of extinct marine megafauna of the Pleistocene
This is not an exhaustive list. Most of these species got extinct during the earliest subdivision of the Pleistocene (Gelasian).
Sharks:
Lamniformes
- Carcharodon hastalis (Early Pleistocene - Calabrian)
- Parotodus benedenii (Early Pleistocene - Calabrian)
Carcharhiniformes
- Hemipristis serra (Middle Pleistocene - Chibanian)
Cetaceans:
Mysticetes
- Balaenoptera bertae (Early Pleistocene - Gelasian)
- Eschrichtius akishimaensis (Early Pleistocene - Gelasian)
- Herpetocetus sp. (Early Pleistocene)
- Plesiocetus sp. (Early Pleistocene - Gelasian)
- Balaenula sp. (Early Pleistocene)
Delphinidae
- Platalearostrum hoekmani (Early Pleistocene)
- Orcinus citoniensis (Early Pleistocene - Gelasian)
- Orcinus paleorca (Middle Pleistocene - Chibanian)
- Hemisyntrachelus sp. (Early Pleistocene - Gelasian)
- Rododelphis stamatiadisi (Early Pleistocene)
Phocoenidae
- Semirostrum ceruttii (Early Pleistocene - Calabrian)
Physeteridae
- Scaldicetus sp. (Early Pleistocene - Gelasian)
- Hoplocetus sp. (Early Pleistocene - Gelasian)
Pinnipeds:
Odobenidae
- Ontocetus posti (Early Pleistocene)
Phocidae
- Neomonachus tropicalis (Late Holocene)
- Zalophus japonicus (Late Holocene)
Sirenia:
- Hydrodamalis gigas (Late Holocene)
u/Inner-Ferret7316 — 1 day ago
▲ 31 r/pleistocene
La Brea Tar Pits Studies
Some studies from a final sketch sesh at the La Brea Tar Pits several weeks back before the museum closes for renovations~
Present in the sheet are Merriam's Teratorn (Teratornis merriami), portions of an American Mastodon (Mammut americanum), the body of a Western Horse (Equus occidentalis), an American Lion skull (Panthera atrox), and Harlan's Ground Sloth (Paramylodon harlani).
u/jobaylis — 21 hours ago
#OnThisDay 1996, The World's First Cloned Mammal Was Revealed 🐑
On This Day, July 5, 1996, scientists announced one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century, the birth of Dolly the Sheep, the world's first mammal successfully cloned from an adult cell.
Although Dolly was actually born on July 5, 1996, her existence remained a closely guarded secret until February 22, 1997, when researchers publicly announced the achievement.
Created by scientists Ian Wilmut, Keith Campbell, and their team at the Roslin Institute in Scotland, Dolly was cloned using a groundbreaking technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer. Instead of using an embryo, scientists took the nucleus from an adult sheep's mammary gland cell and placed it into an unfertilized egg cell.
After 277 cloning attempts, only one resulted in a successful pregnancy.
That sheep was Dolly.
Her birth proved that a fully developed adult cell could be "reprogrammed" to create an entirely new animal, something many scientists had believed was impossible.
Dolly lived for six years, gave birth to six healthy lambs, and transformed the future of genetics, stem cell research, regenerative medicine, and biotechnology.
Her creation also sparked worldwide debates over the ethics of cloning, raising questions that scientists and lawmakers continue to discuss today.
Today, Dolly remains one of the most famous animals in scientific history and a symbol of one of humanity's greatest breakthroughs in modern biology.
u/sajiasanka — 1 day ago
The Mammoth's Significance To Humans As Described by "Paleoworld"
u/ExoticShock — 1 day ago
Mmm monke
You know, if you really look at its face up close, it almost looks...human.
u/yorb134 — 2 days ago
Meet Jr. The Bison latifrons.
For #Fossil Friday, meet "Junior." About a month back I was able to take these photos at the new Bison: Standing Strong Smithsonian exhibit in Washington, DC.
Junior is a massive Bison latifrons skull with horns over six feet wide. He was discovered along the Snake River near the American Falls Reservoir in southeastern Idaho.
Marie L. Hopkins, Idaho's first female paleontologist, excavated Junior and in 1951 published on the discovery (see reference below). One of the most complete long horned bison skulls I've ever come across.
#womenwhodig #pleistocene #bisonlatifrons #paleontology #iceage #fossil #citizenscience
Hopkins, M. L. (1951). Bison (Gigantobison) latifrons and Bison (Simobison) alleni in southeastern Idaho. Journal of Mammalogy, 32(2), 192-197. https://doi.org/10.2307/1375374
u/lednarb13 — 2 days ago
▲ 12 r/pleistocene
How do you think life would be if we had civilization during the ice age?
Obvious ones: since it was colder, the locus of human civilization would be shifted further south. Also, reduced crop yields due to lower productivity would mean fewer people than during the Holocene. Also, keeping up with rapid oscillations in climate would be a challenge.
How else do you think it would have impacted us?
u/growingawareness — 1 day ago
Role of trophic cascades in New World extinctions (warning: long read)
A recent paper analyzing megafauna specialization among hunting cultures in the Americas indicated that the Clovis culture in mid-latitude North America lasted roughly 250–600 years, while the Fishtail Projectile Point (FPP) culture in South America persisted for about 1,300 years. Both disappeared following the megafaunal extinctions in their respective continents, suggesting that the extinction process took notably longer in South America than in North America-something thats been pointed out before-even though South America ultimately lost a larger proportion of its megafauna (over 80% versus roughly 72%).
One possible explanation is this had to with trophic cascades. When a new predator rapidly depletes prey populations, established predators often switch to alternative prey, placing additional pressure on those species and causing them to decline or go extinct. This effect can be especially pronounced in ecosystems with many large predators for obvious reasons. It's been argued that this is why N. American ecosystems were less stable than S. American ones.
Terminal Pleistocene North America supported an impressive predator guild that included American lions, Smilodon fatalis, Arctodus simus, Miracinonyx, Panthera onca augusta, cougars, dire wolves, gray wolves, brown bears, and black bears. South America by contrast had Smilodon populator, Arctotherium wingei, cougars, dire wolves in the northern half, and Panthera onca mesembrina in Patagonia. Obviously, North America had more species.
If humans quickly depleted important herbivore populations in North America, native predators might've shifted to remaining prey instead of immediately dying off. Competition between humans and predators could then have accelerated declines among surviving herbivores, creating a snowball effect that led to rapid ecosystem collapse. In South America, a smaller predator guild might've reduced that cascading dynamic, letting extinctions unfold more gradually. It is even possible that many S. American predators disappeared well before the last herbivores, reducing non-human pressure on herbivores for a while.
However, this still leaves the question of why South America experienced more severe extinctions despite the slower pace. There's two non-mutually exclusive possibilities in my opinion. First, human population density during the FPP period in S. America may have been lower than during the Clovis period in N. America, resulting in weaker hunting pressure and a longer extinction process. Second, many South American megaherbivores, especially glyptodonts and giant ground sloths, would have been inherently vulnerable to sustained human predation because of their large size, slow reproduction, and other traits such that they would have gone extinct regardless of a trophic cascade or not.
In that way, trophic cascades may have influenced the speed of extinction more than its magnitude. Greater ecological stability in South America could have only delayed the extinctions of many of its species rather than preventing them from occurring altogether.
I know this was long but what thoughts do you guys have?
u/growingawareness — 1 day ago
Pleistocene Ice Age simulation — mammoths and saber-tooths go extinct as glaciers consume the map (agent-based model)
ABM spanning the last Ice Age: glaciers advance and retreat, vegetation shifts, mammoths graze, saber-tooths hunt. Each species responds only to local conditions — temperature, food availability, prey density.
The collapse is sequential: glaciers shrink the habitable zone → vegetation disappears → mammoths starve → saber-tooths lose their prey and follow.
Full 9-minute simulation: https://youtu.be/UpbvDizaG_I
No human hunting modelled here — purely climate-driven. Curious how much the debate would shift if you added a human pressure layer on top.
u/SimulatedEcology — 2 days ago
▲ 4 r/pleistocene
last refuge
happy fourth to those who celebrate! just had a quick question/ thought discussion i wanted to impose on you all. if there was an undiscovered bone bed somewhere remote, or fossils in general showing an early-middle holocene survival of iconic late pleistocene north and south american fauna such as Smilodon, horses, sloths, proboscideans etc… where would it be? my personal guess would be somewhere in central america, or along the andean region, as these areas of the americas developed agriculture the earliest, and if any animals did hold on from the initial onslaught of the earlier hunter gatherer populations of humans…they’d probably be at lesser risk? i have no backing for that theory, just something that makes sense to me. i’d love to hear what you guys think and also if you even believe there could be a middle to even late holocene survival of any of the iconic fauna that we just haven’t uncovered yet
u/New-Explanation-2658 — 1 day ago
Ancient proteins hint at all-female Homo naledi burial site in Rising Star cave system
phys.orgu/imprison_grover_furr — 2 days ago
Middle Holocene survival of marsupial megafauna on the north coast of New Guinea
Abstract
The timing and causes of the extinction of Pleistocene megafauna are unresolved issues in the natural history of Australia and New Guinea (Sahul). In Australia, megafauna are believed to have become extinct by c. 41ka, but in the Highlands of New Guinea some species persisted until the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), as late as c. 22ka. Here, we present the first evidence that one of these taxa survived beyond even this timeframe. We describe a manual phalanx from a megafaunal macropodid, probably referable to a quadrupedal, forest-dwelling member of the genus Protemnodon recovered from the Middle Holocene (6.8 - 5.3ka) archaeological deposit of Taora, a coastal rockshelter located west of Vanimo, Papua New Guinea. This late local persistence is likely a consequence of low human populations and a relatively small body size. Its disappearance from the region is coincident with broader decline in local mammalian diversity following post-glacial environmental change. Taora provides the first indication that any of Sahul’s megafauna survived beyond the end of the LGM and highlights geographic and chronological variability in this diverse group’s extinction history.
u/Prestigious-Put5749 — 2 days ago
▲ 6 r/pleistocene
did the Irish Elk and Woolly Mammoth roam Ireland during the same time?
I keep getting mixed answers from internet searches.
u/Main-Dig6441 — 2 days ago
▲ 119 r/pleistocene
Prehistoric Planet Ice Age vs Prehistoric Kingdom : Megaloceros giganteus
Which of the two do you think offers us the best model of our giant deer from the Ice Age?
u/Hopeful_Lychee_9691 — 3 days ago
▲ 116 r/pleistocene
The best Cenozoic game I ever played
When I was younger, I was scrolling through my iPad and I managed to find a game called ぜつめつどうぶつえん which translates from Japanese to (Zetsumetsu Zoo) which was released on 2015 for the (Google play and the App Store). I only know a few parts of the game but looking back I decided to research it. I had no clue of any of the language since it was entirely in Japanese and decided to translate it with Ai also to put salt in the wound there was practically no one I could find that knew about this game only from one guy from Deviantart which he states that the game was considered lost media. Plot in the game you go back in time to the middle Holocene all the way to the late Paleocene there’s 10 stages. The whole game contains 52 Cenozoic animals. There are only two versions free version: only allows you to go to 1-5 and the paid version: allows you to go through all of them. There is a video which I will put in the comments, I decided to show some of the animals that were in Stages 1-4. If there’s any questions about the game, I am here to answer for example, there’s lore in the game.
The list includes
Stage one
Dodo
Quagga
Blue buck
Tasmanian tiger
Zygomaturus
Stage two
Woolly mammoth
Steppe bison
Megaloceros
Glyptodon
Gigantopithecus
Stage three
Megatherium
Smilodon
Woolly rhinoceros
Giant moa
Giant Cuban owl
Stage four
Giant koala
Short face bear
Homotherium
Elasmotherium
Sivatherium
u/Deep_Situation_1965 — 4 days ago
▲ 260 r/pleistocene
Protocyon troglodytes: the “first dog” wild canid by IsaacOWJ
u/Hopeful_Lychee_9691 — 5 days ago