Lange untangles the complex evolutionary lineages of mammal families, including the gomphotheres, elephant-like creatures that coexisted with humans at the end of the Pleistocene. You�ll learn about the geologic events that led to the ice ages, along with possible causes for the mass extinctions of so many species.

The perfect introduction to the Ice Age, complete with ENORMOUS fold-out pages!

The fascinating lives and puzzling demise of some of the largest animals on earth. Until a few thousand years ago, creatures that could have been from a sci-fi thriller—including gorilla-sized lemurs, 500-pound birds, and crocodiles that weighed a ton or more—roamed the earth. These great beasts, or “megafauna,” lived on every habitable continent and on many islands. With a handful of exceptions, all are now gone. What caused the disappearance of these prehistoric behemoths? No one event can be pinpointed as a specific cause, but several factors may have played a role. Paleomammalogist Ross D. E. MacPhee explores them all, examining the leading extinction theories, weighing the evidence, and presenting his own conclusions. He shows how theories of human overhunting and catastrophic climate change fail to account for critical features of these extinctions, and how new thinking is needed to elucidate these mysterious losses. Along the way, we learn how time is determined in earth history; how DNA is used to explain the genomics and phylogenetic history of megafauna—and how synthetic biology and genetic engineering may be able to reintroduce these giants of the past. Until then, gorgeous four-color illustrations by Peter Schouten re-create these megabeasts here in vivid detail.

Find out how animals lived, fought, and died during the Ice Age.

Earth's past is littered with the mysterious and unexplained: the pyramids, Easter Island, Stonehenge, dinosaurs, and the list goes on and on as science looks for clues to decipher these puzzles.One such mystery surrounds the now-extinct creature called the woolly mammoth. Author and meteorologist Michael Oard has studied the mammoth and its equally mysterious time period, the Ice Age, for many years and has come to some fascinating conclusions to help lift the fog engulfing the facts. Some of the questions he addresses include:What would cause the summer temperatures of the northern United States and European to plummet more than 50 degrees Fahrenheit?Why did mammoths become extinct across the entire earth at the same time as many other large mammals?Why are the mammoth carcasses found generally in standing positions?How could large lakes exist in what are today very dry, desert-like places?What was the source of the abnormal of moisture necessary for heavy snow?What caused the cold summer temperatures and heavy snowfall to persist for hundreds of years?In logical progression many other Ice Age topics are explained including super Ice Age floods, ice cores, man in the Ice Age, and the number of ice ages. This is one of the most difficult eras in geological history for a uniformitarian scientist (one who believes the earth evolved by slow processes over millions of years) to explain, simply because long ages of evolution cannot explain it. Provided here are plausible explanations of the seemingly unsolvable mysterious about the Ice Age and the woolly mammoths - Frozen in Time.

The acclaimed Dutch painter and illustrator of the enormously successful Gnomes takes readers back hundreds of thousands of years to the Ice Age. Through more than 220 pages of full-color illustrations and incisive text, Rien Poortvliet presents an up-close look at real and imaginary Ice Age animals.

"Describes the characteristics, food, habitat, behavior, and extinction of dodos"--

"Describes the characteristics, food, habitat, behavior, and extinction of woolly mammoths"--

Discover creatures of the ice age and the artistry behind bringing these prehistoric animals to life. From creating a woolly mammoth to drawing a Phoroshacos under ferocious attack from a Doedicurus, learn how to master the key characteristics of lots of different ice age creatures using fundamental drawing techniques.

An introduction to life during the last ice age describes the spread of the ice, the animals that flourished at the time, including both extinct creatures and those that survive, and early humans, and discusses paleontological discoveries.