"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 roamed the Earth. In Vanished Giants, paleontologist Anthony J. Stuart explores the lives and environments of these Ice Age 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 -- and, drawing on the latest evidence provided by radiocarbon dating, of how that world may have ended. Linking the extinction of Ice Age megafauna to the beginning of the so-called Sixth Extinction, Vanished Giants has important implications for understanding the likely fate of present-day animals in the face of contemporary climate change and vastly increasing human populations."--Back cover
