![]() Part of the analysis involved sizing up the predators themselves. In a new study surveying the effects of large carnivores stalking the Ice Age landscape, University of California, Los Angeles paleontologist Blaire Van Valkenburgh and colleagues found that the young of many large Pleistocene herbivores would have been right in the sweet spot for hungry carnivores. But their offspring were a different story. Large size was a refuge was most Pleistocene giants. Smilodon didn’t take on adult mammoths and Megatherium, for example, but often targeted camels and bison instead. Clawing into a pachyderm is a high-risk scenario, even considering the fleshy reward, and fossil evidence has suggested the same pattern held in the Pleistocene. It’s the same reason why lions don’t chase after adult elephants. Many of the most iconic Ice Age herbivores were simply too big to kill. ![]() Bigger prey requires bigger cutlery, right? So given that some prehistoric predators had such impressive weapons it’s not surprising that we’ve often imagined them setting into mammoths and other Ice Age giants. The long fangs of Smilodon have made it a staple of museum halls as well as schlock horror, and the thought of staring down a giant hyena is enough to send a shiver down my spine. Many Pleistocene carnivores certainly look menacing enough. These were the sabercats, hyenas, wolves, and other predators past. Following out the engineer analogy, the megaherbivores of times past had managers. Wherever they went, mastodons, sloths, bison, and their ilk changed the landscape by eating, defecating, trampling, and otherwise going about their plant-mashing business. The huge herbivores of the Ice Age were ecosystem engineers.
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