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| ANCIENT
LANDSCAPES to read text click red squares below |
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| ANCIENT LANDSCAPES (to return to top of page click blue squares) The demise of dinosaurs ushered in the Age of Mammals, the Cenozoic (or modern life) era, which covers the last 66 million years of Earth's history. New species of mammals and birds evolved rapidly in the absence of dinosaurs. Flora and fauna flourished in and around subtropical lakes and streams. The Green River Formation, one of the richest fossil deposits in the world, contains palm fronds, tropical flowers, dragonflies, turtles, crocodiles, and more than 25 varieties of fish. Away from the water lived primitive browsers, early carnivores, primates, insectivores, and rodents. Condylarths, the size of house cats, were among the most important early mammals. They gave rise to all hoofed mammals, elephantine forms, whales, and dolphins. New to the Southwest were small primates akin to lemurs, hippopotamus-like animals, flightless birds that stood seven feet tall, and, of particular importance, grasses. 
As savanna-like grasslands expanded, so did the numbers and types of grazing animals, including camels, rhinoceroses, long-horned bison, three-toed horses, mastodons, and mammoths. Wolves, lions, and short-faced bears fed on the herbivores. Humans entered North America at the very end of this era, arriving in the Southwest at least 11,000 years ago. Soon after, camels, horses, saber-tooth cats, and all of the giant mammals became extinct. Was there a connection? Perhaps. The timing fits closely, and archaeologists have found spear points among the bones at mammoth and mastodon kill sites. But the relative importance of human hunters in the downfall of these creatures remains a mystery. CAPTION 1 Riches of the Utah-Colorado-Wyoming Green River Formation: a palm frond (left); a common herring-like fish, Gosiutichthys (above); and a snapping turtle (far right). CAPTION 2 Mammoths—extinct elephants (below)—once populated most continents of the world; and as humans were evolving, so too were mammoths. Early Homo sapiens hunted them in the Southwest and elsewhere, some say to the point of extinction, but the debate goes on. CAPTION 3 Sometimes called the saber-toothed tiger, Smilodon—a lion-sized giant among saber-tooth cats—probably stalked prehistoric horses, antelope, and deer in grasslands and open woodlands of the Southwest. Most likely, this unusual cat went for the throat of its prey with these 7-inch (18-cm) dagger-like canine teeth (below). |
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