Genome (The Extinction Files, #2)

by A.G. Riddle

that’s the extinction of mostly large animals around the time the last ice age ended. It’s perhaps one of the greatest scientific mysteries—well, at least for an evolutionary biologist like myself.” Nigel held his hands out. “Imagine the world roughly 12,000 years ago—it was a land of giants. Mastodons. Saber-toothed cats. Giant condors. Ground sloths. Saber-toothed salmon. At the same time humans were founding the city of Jericho, massive beasts walked the Earth, dotted the skies, and swam in the oceans. Some had been around a lot longer than us—tens of millions of years. Then, in the blink of an eye—in evolutionary timescales—they were gone.”