Megafauna Abundance
15,000 BCE • North America
“About 15,000 years ago, the American West looked much as Africa's Serengeti Plains do today, with herds of elephants and horses pursued by lions and cheetahs, and joined by members of such exotic species as camels and giant ground sloths… the extinctions…occurred around 17,000 to 12,000 years ago in the Americas...Whether coincidentally or not, that date is identical, within experimental error, to the date of Clovis hunters' arrival in the Grand Canyon area."
Diamond, Jared M. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: W.W. Norton &, 1999. 43.
"Skeleton of Columbian mammoth." 2009. Wikimedia user WolfmanSF.
Learn about Maya Lin’s fifth and final memorial: a multi-platform science based artwork that presents an ecological history of our world - past, present, and future.
Discover ecological histories and stories of former abundance, loss, and recovery on the map of memory.
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