Friday, June 24, 2005
Fallen comrades
No, I'm not talking about Jacob Zuma. I'm refering to our fellow mammals that didn't make it past the last ice age. Seeing as we've had about 10 millenia of relative warmth, and the next ice age can't be far away, especially at the current levels of human planet interaction, perhaps it would be auspicious to remember those that only left behind faint traces of their existence.
The most famous of animals that became extinct at least 10000 years ago must surely be the mammoth. They came in various forms, including woolly and pygmy, and so many have been found that some have even been eaten (frozen food) by contemporary hungry mammals.
Another extinct favourite is the smilodon, better known as a sabre-toothed cat. With teeth reaching 17 cm, a body weight twice that of a lion, they must have been impressively nasty characters. And, like those that now live in Los Angeles, they seemed to have a fondness for tar pits.
I suspect smilodons might've needed their ferocious teeth to crack the shell of the glyptodon. This carsized herbivore had an armourplated turtlelike shell, a protective skullcap and a useful proboscis. Related to sloths, they had a top speed of a few kilometers per hour.
The megatherium was a giant sloth, that, due to its gigantic claws, had to step on the side of its feet when it walked upright. They weighed about as much as elephants and are rumoured to still be in hiding in the Amazon jungle.
There are numerous others other extinct mammals that I won't list here, but I would like to suggest that we hurry up and start cloning and breeding them - before the next ice age hits and we sunloving mammals find ourselves, like we found them, encased and preserved in death for the amusement of the next age.
The most famous of animals that became extinct at least 10000 years ago must surely be the mammoth. They came in various forms, including woolly and pygmy, and so many have been found that some have even been eaten (frozen food) by contemporary hungry mammals.
Another extinct favourite is the smilodon, better known as a sabre-toothed cat. With teeth reaching 17 cm, a body weight twice that of a lion, they must have been impressively nasty characters. And, like those that now live in Los Angeles, they seemed to have a fondness for tar pits.
I suspect smilodons might've needed their ferocious teeth to crack the shell of the glyptodon. This carsized herbivore had an armourplated turtlelike shell, a protective skullcap and a useful proboscis. Related to sloths, they had a top speed of a few kilometers per hour.
The megatherium was a giant sloth, that, due to its gigantic claws, had to step on the side of its feet when it walked upright. They weighed about as much as elephants and are rumoured to still be in hiding in the Amazon jungle.
There are numerous others other extinct mammals that I won't list here, but I would like to suggest that we hurry up and start cloning and breeding them - before the next ice age hits and we sunloving mammals find ourselves, like we found them, encased and preserved in death for the amusement of the next age.
