Pliestocene Park?

September 9, 2004 12:06 AM

Why no Pliestocene Park?"Everyone seems to assume that the primeval condition of the Great Plains was bison and prairie dog, with the occasional pronghorn herd, but no other large mammals. Yet for 1.65 million years, North America teemed with large animals: the 'pleistocene megafauna.' Then as the last ice age was ending and the first humans were coming over from Siberia, most of them died out." Sad -- doesn't everybody want a pony?
posted by namespan (15 comments total)

Actually, the whole Agate Fossil Bed site is pretty cool.
posted by namespan at 12:08 AM on September 9, 2004

This article discusses reintroducing the elephant (and mammoth) to North America as a wild beast. I'm all for it myself.
posted by stbalbach at 12:41 AM on September 9, 2004

Ok, I'm moderately drunk and don't have time to look things up. What about the theory that Native Americans flamed the plains in a primitive form of animal husbandry? I've read that the massive proliferation of prehistoric range animals was due largely to the interference of plains tribes.
posted by rotifer at 12:44 AM on September 9, 2004

Ok, I'm moderately drunk and don't have time to look things up. What about the theory that Native Americans flamed the plains in a primitive form of animal husbandry? I've read that the massive proliferation of prehistoric range animals was due largely to the interference of plains tribes.

From the first link:

"Should the Buffalo Commons ever become a reality, it will recreate an America that existed for only one-hundredth as long. A reality that is emptier and less diverse -- and perhaps was made emptier and less diverse by the ancestors of those who today are for so many a symbol of respect for nature."

Interestingly, there is a similar debate going on in Australia with Tim Flannery and his Future Eaters book.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 2:31 AM on September 9, 2004

More on Holocene extinctions.
posted by moonbiter at 3:47 AM on September 9, 2004

doesn't everybody want a pony?

Me, me, me!!! I do!
posted by nofundy at 4:45 AM on September 9, 2004

Let's not forget our own Kokogiak's terrific MegaFauna page. Don't you dare do it!
posted by mikrophon at 1:00 PM on September 9, 2004

The Future is in the Flatlands.
posted by homunculus at 1:06 PM on September 9, 2004

Never mind the pony, I want one of these knuckle-dragging horse-apes. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
posted by eddydamascene at 2:13 PM on September 9, 2004

Great links and I just love to say 'megafauna.'
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:27 PM on September 9, 2004

"This article discusses reintroducing the elephant (and mammoth) to North America as a wild beast. I'm all for it myself." - If with stbalbach's program, but only as long as they introduce Dire Wolves and Saber-Toothed Tigers as well.

We'd need some kick-ass predators to keep that Mammoth population in check. Those things could breed like rabbits, get out of control, and start trampling up the lawns of suburban America.

stbalbach - If you haven't read it, you'd love Flannery's book that uncanny hengeman mentioned. Flannery proposes the theory (to put it more explicitly) that aboriginal populations in Australia were well integrated into the overall biological economy that their selective range burning actually allowed for a significant increase in the biological diversity of Australia's flora and fauna.
posted by troutfishing at 2:30 PM on September 9, 2004

Scientists are welcome to reintroduce megafauna (I love that word too) into the mountain west, as long as we can hunt them for population control. Hell, I could feed my clan for a year on one Mammoth. 'Course, I'll have to get a few more freezers ... but my dog will just love a femur bone. It might last her all winter.
posted by Wulfgar! at 2:57 PM on September 9, 2004

I like the disease hypothesis. It's sadly ironic that the arrival of a later wave of human migration into the Americas during the 15th-17th centuries wiped out the bulk of the native population of the Americas, not through warfare or genocide, but through the introduction of common diseases and unfamiliar organisms into immunologically naive populations and vulnerable ecosystems.
posted by meehawl at 6:26 PM on September 9, 2004

The pictures on these sites reminded me of Dougal Dixon's After Man, a speculative bestiary of the future. The megafauna of our planet's past seem so familiar, yet somehow so other that they make Dixon's creatures seem all the more plausible to me.
posted by Songdog at 8:24 PM on September 9, 2004

Thanks to all for the great megafauna links. We definitely need more of this in the world.
posted by alms at 9:37 PM on September 9, 2004