The Ice Age

• Northern Hemisphere ice then and now. NOAA's Paleoclimatology Program.
• Southern Hemisphere ice then and now. NOAA's Paleoclimatology Program.
• Erratic boulder. NOAA's Paleoclimatology Program.
• Fjord. NOAA's Paleoclimatology Program.
• Glacial striations on rock. NOAA's Paleoclimatology Program.
• Iceberg. NOAA's Paleoclimatology Program.
• Iceberg. NOAA's Paleoclimatology Program.
• Cartoon summary of Milankovitch. Figure 21.1.
• Earth's orbit through the seasons. NOAA's Paleoclimatology Program. Better than Figure 21.2.
• Tilt. NOAA's Paleoclimatology Program.
• Precession. NOAA's Paleoclimatology Program.
• Eccentricity. NOAA's Paleoclimatology Program.
• Milutin Milankovich. NOAA's Paleoclimatology Program.
• The Greenland ice sheet. NOAA's Paleoclimatology Program.
• The GISP2 ice core drilling site. NOAA's Paleoclimatology Program.
• Tropical glacier
• An ice core. NOAA's Paleoclimatology Program.
• Annual layers in ice core. NOAA's Paleoclimatology Program.
• Drilling site, Vostok base. NOAA's Paleoclimatology Program.
• Vostok climate records. NOAA's Paleoclimatology Program.
• Vostok carbon dioxide record. NOAA's Paleoclimatology Program.
• North and South Pole methane records. NOAA's Paleoclimatology Program.

Ice Ages and Climatic Change

• Cartoon of North Atlantic at last glacial maximum. Figure 21.3.
• The Laurentian ice sheet
• Vegetation of Western North America During Last Ice Age at 18,000, 9,000, 8,000, or 5,000 Years Before Present or Current Patterns.
• Examples of Ice Cores
• Cool maps of the Pleistocene (18,000 Years Ago): better than Figure 21.4.
• and the Modern World.

Ice Age Vertebrates

The Overkill Hypothesis

How do you butcher a mammoth? Instructions and pictures from Texas:

• Cracking the bones for marrow
• Skinning and slicing
• Packing up slices

The Americas

The La Brea Tarpits

• The tar pits are in the middle of an oil field.
• Tar pool
• Entrapment
• Entrapment
• Sabertooth cat
• Sabertooth cat.
• Sabertooth cat.
• Gape of sabertooth cat. Figure 21.9.
• Saber tooth
• Sabertooth cat, from the Web page of the Illinois State Museum.
• RC: GET CAT SCAN FROM DIGIMORPH SITE!
• Ground sloth skeleton
• Ground sloth
• Ground sloth
• Horse
• Bison skeleton
• Bison
• Columbian mammoth
• American mastodon
• Camel skeleton
• Camel
• Skeleton of the bear Arctodus, the largest carnivore at La Brea
• Arctodus
• Dire wolf skeleton
• Dire wolf
• Skeleton of the American lion
• American lion

Mastodons in the East

• Mastodon
• Fighting between bull mastodons: a brilliant study by Dan Fisher, October 2003.
  • Image. Better than Figure 21.6.
  • Image . Better than Figure 21.7.
  • Movie loop from that site

Florida

• Photo of a mammoth bone from Florida WITH CUT MARKS ON IT.
• A completely new genus of sabertooth cat, Xenosmilus, from Florida, dating from perhaps 1 Ma.
  • Press release from the University of Kansas.
  • Press release from the University of Kansas.
  • Press release from the University of Kansas.
• Eremotherium, a giant (5 ton!) ground sloth that found its way to Florida from South America.

Homotherium, the scimitar-toothed cat

South America

Glyptodon

Human Arrival in the Americas

• Clovis point from Clovis
• Clovis points. National Geographic News.
• Clovis tools
• Kennewick site
• Drawing of skull
• Kennewick Man.
• A projectile stuck in Kennewick's pelvis
• The site of Monte Verde

Australia

• Large Pleistocene horned tortoise from Lord Howe Island: Meiolania
• Thylacoleo, the marsupial "lion"
  • Thylacoleo. National Geographic News 2001.
  • Discovery of new skull
  • Thylacoleo BBC News OnLine
  • Thylacoleo bite (painting)
  • Thylacoleo reconstruction

• The thylacine of Tasmania
  • Tasmanian "wolf/tiger"
  • Image from another thylacine page
  • Historical photo of the thylacine
  • Historical photo of thylacine

Island Extinctions

• Skeleton of Aepyornis
• Aepyornis

The dodo

• The dodo of Mauritius.
• Reconstruction
• Dodo drawing. Equivalent of Figure 21.12.
• Reconstruction for a Laotian stamp.

Cuba

• The gigantic Cuban owl Ornimegalonyx

Polynesia

New Zealand

• Moa bones.
• Moa drawing. Figure 21.11.
• Moa stamp, Afghanistan!!??
• Moa stamp, Cuba!!??
• Moa stamp, Laos
• Kakapo.

New Caledonia

• The du . Figure 21.13.

• woolly mammoth
• Discovery of the Beresovka mammoth. Figure 21.5.
• Baby Dima
• Mammoth tooth
• Woolly rhinoceros
• Woolly rhinoceros
• Giant deer .
• Giant deer.
• Mammoth-bone dwelling on the plains of Eastern Europe:
  • Excavation
  • Reconstruction 1
  • Reconstruction 2
  • Reconstruction drawing

New Thoughts on Mammoth-Hunter Society

• "Venus figurine"
• Woman's head with hat?
• "Venus figurine"
• Another photo
• Olga Soffer
• Venus of Kostenki

Wrecking the World's Ecosystems

It doesn't have to happen

The Ivory Trade

• From April 2000: Ivory for Japan.

The Trade in Endangered Species for Oriental "Medicines"

• Musk deer
• Musk deer and bucket of musk glands. National Geographic news

The Great Auk

The Caspian sturgeon, and the caviar that it produces.

• Cans of caviar.
• Sturgeon for sale .

The Canadian harp seal

• You can buy Harp Seal Oil capsules from a company called Omegaplus. Well, actually you can't if you live in the United States. I suspect that's because the US bans imports of parts of endangered species. However, you can also read the pitch for harp seal oil capsules in Chinese, hardly a surprise considering the Chinese penchant for eating endangered species.

The strange case of the extinction of silphium

• Image of Cyrenaican coin with Zeus and silphium on it
• Around 300 BC: silver coin with Apollo and silphium

Other examples of imminent extinction and environmental degradation

• Want a sable coat?. Look at this first.
• Musk deer, slaughtered by the thousand to make perfume.

Extinctions by habitat reduction and/or human introduction of alien species

Page last updated November 17, 2004.

Most links checked September 1, 2004

Images for Chapter 20

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