Page 197 - The Dinosaur Book and Other Wonders of the Prehistoric World (DK-Smithsonian)

No horn has been
preserved as a fossil,
but ice-age cave The name
paintings indicate Deinotherium
that it was very tall. Deinotherium
means “terrible
beast” in
ancient Greek.

Elasmotherium

Elasmotherium had huge,
flat-topped teeth, ideal for eating The tusks grew from the lower
a diet of tough, fibrous grass jaw, unlike those of a modern
that needed a lot of chewing. elephant. Deinotherium may
have used them for digging or
to pull down tree branches.

The enormous antlers
were about 11 ft (3.5 m)
from tip to tip.

Megaloceros stood TAR PITS
about 7 ft (2.1 m) tall
at the shoulders.

Megaloceros
Many fossils of ice-age mammoths have been
found in a group of tar pits near Los Angeles.
The animals became trapped in the sticky tar
and attracted predators, including saber-toothed
cats and ice-age wolves, which also became
trapped. Shown above is part of a Smilodon
skull, blackened by tar.

woodlands of Eurasia were also home to would have hunted them for food. Many
the giant deer Megaloceros. The males animals became extinct at the end of the
had the biggest antlers of all time, which last ice age, about 12,000 years ago. This
they used to impress females and to spar was partly because of human hunters but
with rivals. All these animals lived at the also because changing climates eliminated
same time as early stone-age humans, who many of their habitats. 195

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