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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #211173 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10
• Released on: 2002-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 226 pages

Review
"Plaudits to all author, illustrator, editors, and Mountain Press for this wonderful book on my favorite subject." --Paul S. Martin, emeritus professor of geosciences, University of Arizona Desert Laboratory

About the Author
A series of articles in Life magazine sparked Ian Lange's fascination with Ice Age animals when he was a teenager. Paintings of gargantuan beasts and a photo of a baby woolly mammoth frozen in the arctic tundra set him wondering about the Pleistocene world and its inhabitants. A professor of economic geology at the University of Montana in Missoula, Lange maintains his research of Ice Age animals as a hobby.

Customer Reviews

Absolutely Excellent, even if title is misleading
This book is the premier introduction to the Ice Age, and its now-extinct animals, for the uninitiated reader. It is also an excellent work for the serious student or teacher. The art work is superb, the photographs and diagrams are well chosen, and have the additional bonus of actually following the well-written, easily readable text. This saves the reader the burden of having to leaf back and forth as the book is studied. In short, whether you want to read about the Ice Age for serious study or just have pleasure learning about fascinating animals and times, this your book.

Now to content: Although the book's title and cover seem to indicate it is about animals only, the first half of the book covers, in a lively, interesting fashion, the various ways the Ice Age may have started, what the glaciers did and how they form, move, and melt, what the climate was like, and a hundred other things that are necessary to truly understand what occurred during this significant period of geological time. Well-chosen inserts explain particular matters.

The second half of the book covers the mammals of the Ice Age, with particular emphasis on those living in North America. In addition to the inevitable mammoths and saber-toothed cats, such relatively unknown creatures as the giant short-faced bear, scimitar cat, American lion, Florida cave bear, shrub ox, giant camel, and stag-moose, among many others, are each afforded extensive treatment. The section on toothless animals such as the giant armadillo, the various kinds of enormous ground sloth, etc., is simply one of a kind. You will be amazed and thrilled as you read about each creature in turn, especially as to its size, its diet, where it lived, and its appearance.

The book closes, somewhat sadly, with a broad, yet concise examination on why many of these creatures went extinct so suddenly, and man appears to be a primary culprit. Other potential causes are addressed as well.

A particularly fine feature is a comprehensive list of museums, parks, and sites across the United States where you may go to see the remains of these animals or learn more about them. An excellent bibliography is supplied at the end.

I have read about, and been fascinated by, Ice Age animals for many years, and I can assure you this is the most enjoyable book I have ever seen on the matters I have discussed. The information presented incorporates the latest studies, and is painstakingly accurate. Authors Lange and Norton are to be highly commended on a great book. I recommend it highly.

Welcome to the Ice Age!
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.

Entertaining and Educational
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!