It is fascinating picturing what the (now) American landscape must have looked like during the last ice age, and thinking about all the megafauna (giant mammals) that were around! Some of you may have heard of the theories on how some of our native giant, currently unedible fruits (like the Osage orange) may have been dispersed by some of these megafauna. This article goes into further depth on why these native trees may not have kept up evolutionary with the lack of animals to disperse their fruits and seeds.
"An anachronism is something that is chronologically out of place: a typewriter or floppy disc in a modern office. Leather helmets at the Super Bowl. Or, hopefully, the internal combustion engine in the near future. An ecological anachronism is an adaptation that is chronologically out of place, making its purpose more or less obsolete. A tree with big fruits to attract huge mammals as dispersers of its seeds is anachronistic in a world of relatively small mammals."
This is definitely a fascinating and well-written read.
http://www.americanforests.org/magazine/article/trees-that-miss-the-mammoths/
Also, just for fun, I want to show you what some of these extinct megafauna looked like.
Diagrams (in Portuguese, but they have some nice perspective) of North American megafauna
http://outrasverdadesinconvenientes.blogspot.com/2011/06/primeira-grande-tragedia.html
Herbivores:
"An anachronism is something that is chronologically out of place: a typewriter or floppy disc in a modern office. Leather helmets at the Super Bowl. Or, hopefully, the internal combustion engine in the near future. An ecological anachronism is an adaptation that is chronologically out of place, making its purpose more or less obsolete. A tree with big fruits to attract huge mammals as dispersers of its seeds is anachronistic in a world of relatively small mammals."
This is definitely a fascinating and well-written read.
http://www.americanforests.org/magazine/article/trees-that-miss-the-mammoths/
Also, just for fun, I want to show you what some of these extinct megafauna looked like.
Diagrams (in Portuguese, but they have some nice perspective) of North American megafauna
http://outrasverdadesinconvenientes.blogspot.com/2011/06/primeira-grande-tragedia.html
Herbivores:
Carnivores:
(by the way, scientists now think the "terror birds" (09 in the diagram) were herbivores. http://news.discovery.com/animals/prehistoric-terror-birds-prove-vegetarians-can-look-scary-130829.htm )
Glymptodont (an oversized relative of the armadillo)
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Glyptodon_old_drawing.jpg
Glymptodont (an oversized relative of the armadillo)
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Glyptodon_old_drawing.jpg
Gompotheres
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Knight_Gomphotherium.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Knight_Gomphotherium.jpg