Twilight Of The Mammoths

by Martin, Paul S.; Greene, Harry W.

• ISBN13: 9780520231412
• ISBN10: 0520231414
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-10-31
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

As recently as 11,000 years ago--"near time" to geologists--mammoths, mastodons, gomphotheres, ground sloths, giant armadillos, native camels and horses, the dire wolf, and many other large mammals roamed North America. In what has become one of science's greatest riddles, these large animals vanished in North and South America around the time humans arrived at the end of the last great ice age. Part paleontological adventure and part memoir,

Author Biography

Paul S. Martin is Emeritus Professor of Geosciences, Desert Laboratory, University of Arizona.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	xi
Foreword	xiii
Acknowledgments	xvii
Prologue	1	(178)
1 Discovering the Last Lost World	4	(44)
Radiocarbon Dating and Quaternary Extinctions	44	(4)
2 Overview of Overkill	48	(10)
3 Ground Sloth Dung and Packrat Middens	58	(20)
Giant Meat-Eating Bats?	75	(3)
4 Ground Sloths at Home	78	(22)
Cryptozoology, Ground Sloths, and Mapinguari National Park	98	(2)
5 Grand Canyon Suite: Mountain Goats, Condors, Equids, and Mammoths	100	(18)
6 Deadly Syncopation	118	(11)
7 Digging for the First People in America: High Stakes at Tule Springs	129	(19)
Tricks, Hoaxes, and Bad Science	145	(3)
8 Kill Sites, Sacred Sites	148	(17)
9 Models in Collision: Climatic Change versus Overkill	165	(14)
10 Restoration	179	(21)
Unexpected Ramifications of Ecological Change	199	(1)
11 Resurrection: The Past Is Future	200	(13)
Epilogue	213	(4)
References	217	(26)
Index	243