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Ice Age Mammals of North America
The time is the Pleistocene epoch, about 2 million to 10,000 years ago. Continent-size ice sheets cover 30 percent of the earth's landmass, and strange creatures rove the landscape. Ice Age Mammals of North America transports you to the world of saber-tooth cats, woolly mammoths, four-hundred-pound beavers, and twenty-foot-tall ground sloths. Illustrated descriptions of the animals form the heart of the book and the final chapter explores why so many of these animals were extinct by the end of Pleistocene time.
226 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 8, 2025
I've seen this book pop up for years, and I've always pooh-pooh'ed it. The title, "Ice Age Mammals of North America: A Guide to the Big, the Hairy, and the Bizarre", sounds like it is a pop-science or for kids, and the cover design - while pretty - makes this look a bit more "fun" than "serious". I came across it while looking for another book at the local library and thought, what the hell, let's give this a shot.
Do NOT judge this book by it's cover!
I was impressed because the inside of this book is straight-up professional grade science writing. The first 60 pages are an explanation of the Pleistocene and the Ice Age, with dozens of charts and figures lifted directly from professional journal publications. There's O16/O18 sea sediment core ratios, maps of Pleistocene lakes, diagrams of glacial rebound, a comparative chart of North American v European divisions and land mammal stages, Milankovitch Cycles and Precessions. The writing is accessible and GOOD, but the science itself is all top-notch professional level. I actually recognized a bunch of these charts from some of my own classes!
The bulk of the book is 100 pages dedicated to highlights of the Pleistocene, with the point being that these are essentially an array of animals that the author thinks will be cool (they are). The focus is on Xenathra, Artiodactyla, Perissodactyla, Proboscidea, Carnivora, and Rodentia; Primates, Lagomorphs, Sirenians, Bats, and Marsupials are explicitly left out.
The field guide section is actually good - there are diagrams, maps, size sketches, photos, and detailed multi-page writeups on every creature. This helps the reader understand the life history and the science of this organism, far better than other prehistoric field guides (looking at you Prinecton!).
Now this isn't the books' fault, exactly, but some of the information is out of date. It was published in 2002 based on research from the 1970s-90s.
The most egregious is Nimravidae, which in the book's phylogeny is nested within the Felidae as a descendent of Pseudaelurus (p. 103). I actually have no idea how that phylogeny diagram was created, as even in the text the Nimravidae lived 35MYA while Pseudaelurus genus emerged 20MYA (p. 102 - 103). The text does also states that "Some researchers believe the family Felidae arose from early members of the paleofelids [this means Nimravidae]. Most researchers today, however, are not in favor of this explanation" (p. 103). That latter sentence is correct - "paleofelid" has been abolished, and Nimravids are the most distant clade of the aeluroids; badgers are more closely related to any cat than the Nimravids.
The only other item that popped out to me is that Clovis is still relevant and that the Soultrean Hypothesis is still a hypothesis and not a laughable crackpot theory (p. 188 - 189; p. 194 - 195). There's occasional details like references to cloning mammoths, the use of family trees in general rather than real cladistic diagrams that date the book without being technically wrong (except when they are wrong, like with the Nimravidae above).
The book ends with an amazing appendix of all the museums and fossil sites within the US and Canada complete with addresses, hours, websites, phone numbers, and fees. This is incredible, and honestly makes me consider getting my own copy just to have this list as a reference.
This is such an incredible work, with so much attention to communicating rigorous science. The text is well-written, the explanations are brilliant in how they break down complex science, the illustrations and diagrams are genuinely helpful. Even though it is old, I recommend it.
Do NOT judge this book by it's cover!
I was impressed because the inside of this book is straight-up professional grade science writing. The first 60 pages are an explanation of the Pleistocene and the Ice Age, with dozens of charts and figures lifted directly from professional journal publications. There's O16/O18 sea sediment core ratios, maps of Pleistocene lakes, diagrams of glacial rebound, a comparative chart of North American v European divisions and land mammal stages, Milankovitch Cycles and Precessions. The writing is accessible and GOOD, but the science itself is all top-notch professional level. I actually recognized a bunch of these charts from some of my own classes!
The bulk of the book is 100 pages dedicated to highlights of the Pleistocene, with the point being that these are essentially an array of animals that the author thinks will be cool (they are). The focus is on Xenathra, Artiodactyla, Perissodactyla, Proboscidea, Carnivora, and Rodentia; Primates, Lagomorphs, Sirenians, Bats, and Marsupials are explicitly left out.
The field guide section is actually good - there are diagrams, maps, size sketches, photos, and detailed multi-page writeups on every creature. This helps the reader understand the life history and the science of this organism, far better than other prehistoric field guides (looking at you Prinecton!).
Now this isn't the books' fault, exactly, but some of the information is out of date. It was published in 2002 based on research from the 1970s-90s.
The most egregious is Nimravidae, which in the book's phylogeny is nested within the Felidae as a descendent of Pseudaelurus (p. 103). I actually have no idea how that phylogeny diagram was created, as even in the text the Nimravidae lived 35MYA while Pseudaelurus genus emerged 20MYA (p. 102 - 103). The text does also states that "Some researchers believe the family Felidae arose from early members of the paleofelids [this means Nimravidae]. Most researchers today, however, are not in favor of this explanation" (p. 103). That latter sentence is correct - "paleofelid" has been abolished, and Nimravids are the most distant clade of the aeluroids; badgers are more closely related to any cat than the Nimravids.
The only other item that popped out to me is that Clovis is still relevant and that the Soultrean Hypothesis is still a hypothesis and not a laughable crackpot theory (p. 188 - 189; p. 194 - 195). There's occasional details like references to cloning mammoths, the use of family trees in general rather than real cladistic diagrams that date the book without being technically wrong (except when they are wrong, like with the Nimravidae above).
The book ends with an amazing appendix of all the museums and fossil sites within the US and Canada complete with addresses, hours, websites, phone numbers, and fees. This is incredible, and honestly makes me consider getting my own copy just to have this list as a reference.
This is such an incredible work, with so much attention to communicating rigorous science. The text is well-written, the explanations are brilliant in how they break down complex science, the illustrations and diagrams are genuinely helpful. Even though it is old, I recommend it.
May 6, 2019
I got this after The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World, hoping for the same type of read but about the Ice Age. So my expectations were unfairly high and I was disappointed.
There's a decent rundown of the Ice Age Mammals of North America, quite as advertised. It gets pretty dry quickly though, with a fairly repetitive rundown of ages and date ranges and not much colour to keep you interested or help imagine them. The author's a geologist so geological context presented at the beginning comes across as much less shallow. Still, credit to him for compiling this reference as there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of related material out there.
There's a decent rundown of the Ice Age Mammals of North America, quite as advertised. It gets pretty dry quickly though, with a fairly repetitive rundown of ages and date ranges and not much colour to keep you interested or help imagine them. The author's a geologist so geological context presented at the beginning comes across as much less shallow. Still, credit to him for compiling this reference as there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of related material out there.
December 26, 2019
The best parts of the book are the pictures and descriptions of the individual species. I also liked the charts that related animals to their evolutionary cousins. The section on why ice ages happen was a little unclear, but it seems like a big enough and complicated enough topic that it could be its own book, so I’m not holding it against the author. There’s only so much you can put in a small book.
March 5, 2019
Some nice pictures but the text was quite dry and clipped. Decent final chapter on why the megafauna went extinct.
January 19, 2021
Good read. Remove the evolution crap and you have some nice descriptions of animals that are now extinct.
September 26, 2016
Full of artwork, line drawings and diagrams of the so-called Pleistocene mega-fauna this is an important reference on the large mammals of North American that lived during the Ice Age. The book gives a full description of the fossil remains of these animals and includes an appendix of museums and sites where you could see these impressive beasts for yourself. My favorites are the Columbian Mammoth (much bigger than extant elephants), the Short-Faced Bear (larger by far than the Grizzly) and the Giant Beaver (a beaver the size of a Black Bear). The leading hypotheses for their extinction, human-interaction (hunting) and climate change (warming), make this relevant reading.
September 28, 2024
While a pretty good reference for North American mammals, unfortunately it is also completely riddled with evolutionary garbage that is common with books of this type. One example is the box on pages 86-87 about carbon-14/radiocarbon dating. The author states that it is effective for materials up to 50,000 years old, yet carbon-14 has been found in dinosaur bones supposedly over 65 million years old.
March 3, 2009
A very interesting read about ice age animals. I am very intersted in the ice age, and learning more about the ice age, which in the history of time was really pretty recent at only 10,000 years ago. Sloths, saber tooth cats, mammoths, etc.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews