The Call of Distant Mammoths

If you went back in time to the site of Los Angeles as it looked 12.000 years ago - at the height of the last Ice Age - the animal population might remind you of Africa. You would see saber-toothed tigers, giant ground sloths, camels, and hippos, as well as giant mastodons and mammoths, extinct relatives of the elephant. Why are these splendid creatures no longer with us at all or largely extinct outside of Africa?

To help us undersand what happened during the Ice Age, Ward takes us on a tour of mass extinctions through Earth's history. In so doing, he introduces us to a profound paradigm shift now taking place in paleontology: rather than arising from the gradual workings of everyday forces, all mass extinctions are due to catastrophic atcions, such as, in the case of the mammoths, human hunting.

Written with an irresistible combination of passion and expertise, The Call of Distant Mammoths is a brilliant, engaging exploration of the history of life and the importance of humanity as an evolutionary force.