Ice Age Mammals of North America | 
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Product Description
The time is the Pleistocene epoch, about 2 million to 10,000 years ago. Continent-size ice sheets cover 30 percent of the earth's landmass, and strange creatures rove the landscape. Ice Age Mammals of North America transports you to the world of saber-tooth cats, woolly mammoths, four-hundred-pound beavers, and twenty-foot-tall ground sloths. Illustrated descriptions of the animals form the heart of the book and the final chapter explores why so many of these animals were extinct by the end of Pleistocene time.
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Customer Reviews:
• Entertaining And Educational 18 November, 2004
Ice Age Mammals is a very enjoyable book. I highly enjoyed reading this work and found it to be more entertaining than I would have imagined. The author obviously wrote this book as the result of wanting to read a similar work, but never having found such a book, thus wrote his own here.
The book breaks down all the ice-age mammals into species and talks about each in turn. There are some beautiful illustrations contained in the book as well as some maps and other useful diagrams.
None of the material is over the head of the average reader and I would recommend this book for children age 12 and up to adult.
These extinct animals are simply fascinating, and this book peaks the imagination like few others on the topic. We can only speculate on the many wonderous beasts that once roamed our earth and terrified our ancestors for milennia, but thanks to works like "Ice Age Mammals" by Ian Lange, we can speculate with just a little bit more accuracy and a whole lot more amazement!
- Reviewed by customer ID: AH0K6KAO3N1RH
• A Wonderful Little Book 27 November, 2004
I picked up this book while browsing the gift shop at the La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles. I was looking for something to serve as a memento for out family trip, something that would serve as evening reading material, and something that would be interesting and educational for the kids. This book seemed like just the ticket. It's nicely presented with rich, glossy pages, and it's chock full of interesting/relevant photographs, black-and-white drawings, and color illustrations.
Lange opens his book with a tantalizing summary of some of the exotic animals that lived during the Pleistocene, and a very short description of a changed world, covered with glaciers. He follows this with a short but very interesting and well-written discussion about continental drift and the interchange of animals between the American and Eurasian continents. I particularly liked his discussion of the discovery of the ice ages, and how he highlights some of the critical evidence such as oxygen-isotope shifts that make it possible for scientists to understand much of the detail of these aspects of earth's history. This section has some exciting discussions regarding earth geology that is sure to excite the young reader and amateur geologist alike.
This introductory material, consisting largely of the geological evidence of ice ages, takes up roughly the first 65 pages of the book. With the groundwork laid, Lange begins introducing the reader to the vast array of fascinating animals that lived, geologically speaking, just a moment ago. In many ways these animals were as amazing as the dinosaurs, but while dinosaurs lived millions of years before humans evolved, the remarkable animals of the Pleistocene lived contemporaneously with our ancestors, hunted them, and were hunted by them.
The majority of the book's middle section consists of case-by-case descriptions of some of the more interesting (at least in terms of size and ferocity) animals from that period. These include the American lion, glyptodont, mammoth ground sloth, yesterday's camel, titanis bird, long-horned giant bison, wooly mammoth Nebraska camel, American mastodon, dire wolf, Florida cave bear, giant short-faced bear, and of course, Smilodon fatalis - the saber-toothed cat.
Lange doesn't just describe these animals; he helps the reader understand how they fit within the context of evolution, the evidence surrounding their discovery, and how they compare and contrast with similar modern-day animals. It's amazing to read of these ancient animals and realize how similar America was to Africa just 12,000 years ago. This leads Lange to his concluding ideas about extinction and the growing sense that early humans were largely responsible for the die-off of large animals in America.
Over all this is a wonderful little book that packs a lot of information into relatively few pages. It's not overly simplistic. Quite the opposite, it describes conclusions and results from cutting-edge research. But the book is also very approachable. Its language, presentation, pictures and photographs make this an entertaining as well as informative story, and one that any grown or budding geologist/paleontologist is bound to enjoy.
- Reviewed by customer ID: AH88WGWK9PMDL
• Welcome To The Ice Age! 18 March, 2004
North America, more than 10,000 years ago, was a very interesting place. Gaint ground sloths, dwarf wolly mommoths, Nebrasks camels (weighing about a ton) and saber-toothed cats are just some of the bizarre animals you will find within the covers of this book. Ice Age Mammals of North America tries to give you a very balanced look at not just the big and hairy, but the more common creatures. Lions, wolves, bears, seals, porcupines, goats, beavers and deer to name just a few. The book begins with what North America was like, why we think ice ages are triggered, goes into detail about the many different animals (which takes up much of the book) and then tells us about the extinction of the megamammals (plus the debates about WHY extinctions happen at all). There are lots of photos and colorful illustrations, sidebars full of fact, lots of humor, a list of museums, fossil sites and websites you can visit. It also has a detailed glossary, bibliography and index. Great for adults and kids. Ian M. Lange really enjoyed doing this work, you can tell, and Dorothy S. Norton's work really helped bring many of the animals to life.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3NIQK6ZLYEP1L
• Review Of The Book: Ice Age Mammals Of North America 06 April, 2008
The book was very insightful, and the illustrations were quite interesting. The information was well written and engaging. I would recomend it to anyone interested in prehistory, especially that involving the age of mammals.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3W1COX8DAKNU4
• Great Information! 19 July, 2005
This is a well-written book with excellent explanations of the ice age and a wonderful descriptions of the ice age mammals. I have used to book extensively in designing programming for a state park.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1JJEXLB44JMQS
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