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megafauna

An artist impression of a group of Gigantopithecus blacki within a forest in southern China. Source: Garcia/Joannes-Boyau, Southern Cross University/Nature

The Extinction of the Giant Ape: A Long-standing Mystery Solved

Giants once roamed the karst plains of southern China, three-meter-tall apes weighing in at 550 pounds (250 kilograms). These very distant human ancestors - Gigantopithcus blacki - went extinct...
A recent study, outlining what archaeologists consider the oldest known footprints in the United States, is giving rise to new inquiries and overturning established beliefs. Source: YouTube Screenshot/PBS NewsHour

Footprints in New Mexico - The First Humans in North America? (Video)

In the arid expanses of New Mexico's White Sands National Monument, a groundbreaking discovery challenges established notions of human history in North America. Archaeologists, led by David Bustos...
Artists impression of the scene at White Sands National Park 23,000 years ago when teenagers left their prints in the mud. Source: © Davide Bonadonna and Bournemouth University

Humans Got To America 7,000 Years Earlier Than Thought, New Research Confirms

Matthew Robert Bennett & Sally Christine Reynolds /The Conversation When and how humans first settled in the Americas is a subject of considerable controversy. In the 20th century, archaeologists...
Carved giant sloth bones indicate humans in South America. Source: ©Mirian Pacheco/The Royal Society Publishing

Historical Timeline Shook: Human Arrival in South America Pushed Back to 25,000 Years Ago

Human arrival in the Americas has a long-disputed timeline, and new evidence supports pushing back the date for human arrival in South America to at least 25,000 years ago. The evidence? Remains of...
Ancient spearheads. Source: Enrique / Adobe Stock.

Blood Residue Found on 13,000-Year-Old Ice Age Weapons

The earliest people who lived in North America shared the landscape with huge animals. On any day these hunter-gatherers might encounter a giant, snarling saber-toothed cat ready to pounce, or a...
Amazonian rock art at the Serranía La Lindosa in Colombia. Source: Iriarte et al. / Royal Society B

Does Amazonian Rock Art 'Sistine Chapel' Depict Ice Age Megafauna?

Earlier this month, the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B published detailed analyses and pictures of the spectacular 8 mile (13 km) long rock art mural discovered in the...
Ice Age animal bones, such as this woolly rhinoceros jaw, have been discovered in Devon. Source: AC Archaeology

Menagerie of Ice Age Animal Bones Found in Cave in Devon, England

Archaeological explorations undertaken in anticipation of an upcoming housing project have produced a significant find near the city of Plymouth in Devon county in southwest England. While excavating...
Arctic explorer Bernard Buigues contemplates the Jarkov woolly elephant tusks emerging from the frozen landscape in Siberia, 1998. These tusks are about three meters (10ft) and over 45kg (100lbs) each.  There is a growing body of evidence that overhunting is the main cause of the extinction of the mammoths. (Francis Latreille / ©The World As It Once Was)

The World As It Once Was: The Shifting Baseline In Iconic Megafauna

Centuries of trophy and commercial hunting, isolation in captivity and poaching, have caused a baseline shift in the perception of iconic megafauna such as Asian and African elephants, which should...
A modern-day giant hippo (Hippopotamus amphibious) in water. Source: jwjarrett / Adobe Stock

Discovery of Tooth Reveals When Giant Hippos Roamed Britain

Hippopotamus antiquus , or the European hippopotamus, is a now extinct species of giant hippo that once roamed Europe much before the last glacial period. In the much explored Westbury Cave, in...
California Park Ranger Discovers Massive Cache of Miocene Epoch Fossils

California Park Ranger Discovers Massive Cache of Miocene Epoch Fossils

Paleontologists excavating a site in northern California have unearthed one of the largest and most astonishing collections of Miocene fossils ever discovered in the state. Dating to the Miocene...
For 2 million years prehistoric humans were super predators and then all the easy prey went extinct, and we had to evolve to a new dietary paradigm: farming.       Source: anibal / Adobe Stock

The Super Predators That Killed Everything They Could. Humans

A team of scientists in Israel have made the news for having made the rather obvious discovery that humans “have been super-predators for 2 million years.” However, this is the dumbed down media take...
The discovery of a long-forgotten woolly mammoth bone may prove that humans and woolly mammoths coexisted in the northeastern United States.

First Humans in New England May Have Met and Hunted Woolly Mammoths

Did humans and woolly mammoths share the same territory near the end of the last Ice Age in what is now the Northeastern United States? A new study from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire,...
Somewhere in Southwestern North America during the late Pleistocene, a pack of dire wolves (Canis dirus) are feeding on their bison kill, while a pair of gray wolves (Canis lupus) approach in the hopes of scavenging. One of the dire wolves rushes in to confront the gray wolves, and their confrontation allows a comparison of the bigger, larger-headed and reddish-brown dire wolf with its smaller, gray relative. Source: Mauricio Antón/ Nature

Beyond Game of Thrones: Study Reveals Secrets of Real Dire Wolves

Have you ever heard of dire wolves? You’ll probably say “Yes” if you are a fan of the TV show Game of Thrones . This canine species appears in the iconic TV series, where it is known as a ‘direwolf’...
Clovis tools may have been developed to hunt the last of the North American megafauna. Source: Daniel /Adobe Stock

Short Lived Clovis Tools May Have Killed Off North American Megafauna

While they were not the earliest inhabitants of the Americas, the Clovis people had an extremely significant prehistoric culture that was distinctive and widespread across what is now North America...
10,000-Year-Old Footprints Tell Amazing Story of Human Encounter with Megafauna

10,000-Year-Old Footprints Tell Amazing Story of Human Encounter with Megafauna

Archaeologists at White Sands National Park in New Mexico examining a 10,000-year-old track of human footprints , have made more fascinating discoveries. But they’ve also unearthed a trowel-full of...
Artist’s reconstruction of a savannah in Middle Pleistocene Southeast Asia. In the foreground Homo erectus, stegodon, hyenas, and Asian rhinos are depicted. Water buffalo can be seen at the edge of a riparian forest in the background. Source: Peter Schouten / Nature

Nature Killed Off Megafauna, And It Could Happen Again

The giant beasts and ancient megafauna that roamed Southeast Asia 100,000 years ago died because of climate change. A team of scientists from Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, has published...
The cave painting, believed to represent the now extinct giant sloth lemur, was discovered in the a limestone cave located in a nature reserve in western Madagascar. Source: gudkovandrey / Adobe Stock

Unique Painting of Extinct Giant Sloth Discovered in Madagascar Cave

A team of scientists exploring a cave in western Madagascar have discovered an ancient painting which they are calling the “only known drawing of an extinct giant lemur” that once lived in the island...
Life and death in tropical Australia, 40,000 years ago. Giant reptiles ruled northern Australia during the Pleistocene with mega-marsupials as their prey.     Source: R. Bargiel, V. Konstantinov, A. Atuchin & S. Hocknull (2020). Queensland Museum.

Humans Coexisted with Giant Lizards and Mega Marsupials in Australia

When people first arrived in what is now Queensland, they would have found the land inhabited by massive animals including goannas six meters long and kangaroos twice as tall as a human. We have...
Students make protective plaster wrappings for asphalt-preserved giant sloth bones at the Tanque Loma tar pit locality in southwestern Ecuador. (Martin Tomasz / La Brea Tar Pits)

Giant Sloth Death Pit Reveals Death By Feces Ingestion

The fossilized remains of 22 Ice Age, elephant sized sloths have been found preserved in 20,000-year-old asphalt in Ecuador. The discovery of this giant sloth death pit is revealing a virtual Bible...
Deceased mammoth

Did Ice Age Extinctions Force Us to Invent Civilization?

Nick Longrich / The Conversation Why did we take so long to invent civilization? Modern Homo sapiens first evolved roughly 250,000 to 350,000 years ago. But initial steps towards civilization –...
The mammoth traps were found in Tultepec, Mexico. Source: Edith Camacho, INAH

The World’s First 'Mammoth Traps' Found in Mexico?

Anthropologists from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History said in a statement on Wednesday that a pair of hunting pits, essentially mammoth traps, were discovered during...
Skeleton of a prehistoric cave bear. Source: Fizped / CC BY-SA 3.0

Humans A Major Factor In the Extinction of Giant Cave Bears

Until 25,000 years ago, Europe was home to some of the largest mammals, that ever lived. One of the most remarkable of the megafauna was the gigantic cave bear. Why these massive animals and other...
An illustration shows the approximate height of a giant penguin next to a woman. Source: Canterbury Museum

Huge Penguins Added to the List of New Zealand’s Extinct Species

A new species of giant penguin - about 1.6 meters (5.25 ft.) tall - has been identified from fossils found in Waipara, North Canterbury. The discovery of Crossvallia waiparensis , a monster penguin...
3 Foot Tall Parrot Species Discovered On New Zealand, Island Of Feathered Giants

3 Foot Tall Parrot Species Discovered On New Zealand, Island Of Feathered Giants

Scientists have uncovered fossilized leg bones from a gigantic parrot that once inhabited Central Otago on the South Island of New Zealand. The St. Bathans fauna comprises a rich suite of fossilized...

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