What is the relationship of the Ice age and the animals that became extinct?

Question

Please explain in detail.

Answer 1

"The ice age" is not the right way to say it. An Ice Age is a naturally occuring event in the wheather cycle of our planet. There have been several Ice Ages in the history of our planet. It is estimated that Ice ages occure every 40 000 to 100 000 years, the last one ending about 10 000 years ago.

Many things are changed by events as significant as the drastic climate changes associated with ice ages. The whole topograph of an area can be altered by the movement of glaciers that spread down from the Northern Pole. Much of the geological featuring of the mid west were caused by ice scraping huge pieces of debris accross the land. These glaciers have covered much of Europe and North America as far South as the Northern Uninted States.

Great temperature changes like this affect the life systems of the regions they affect as much as the moving ice can. Plant life would be aspecially vulnerable.

Many species that depend on the plentifull food available in warmer climats would find there was no longer sufficient food available for survival. Some of these move to warmer areas and many others become extinct or at least much less plentifull. With the loss of so many herbavor species, the carnivores would also be in danger.

Some animals adapt. They are either small enough, or clever enough to move or find new supplies of food. Large animals would have a much more difficult time addapting to changes like this. They need more food to be available and weather they are predators or prey, there would be less available.

More inteligent predators, like man, were able to find shelter and alternate food sources and so were able to survive. Others like many of the larger cats we know lived in North america for instance would have gone extinct.

I hope this helps.

Answer 2

Although the megafauna of the Pleistocene are often called "Ice Age Mammals", it is worth noting that there was more than one ice age during the Pleistocene. Evidence from Greenland glaciers and oxygen isotope analysis indicates that glaciers formed, expanded and retreated at least eighteen times in the last two million years.

The eighteen or so maximum heights of glaciation would have been what we think of as the "Ice Age", with snow and ice covering much of North America, Europe and northern Asia, but there were also just as many periods in which the glaciers were completely gone, and temperatures worldwide were much warmer. At times, they were considerably warmer than we even see today, even with global warming.

All of the so-called "Ice Age Mammals" like mammoths, ground sloths, wooly rhinos and sabre-toothed cats survived all of the previous interglacial warming periods, it was only the last glacial melting period that corresponded with mass extinctions of these megafauna.

So while climate change may have been a factor in some of the extinctions, it probably wasn't the sole cause, as the animal populations had survived similar climatic changes in the past.

About the only factor that changed between the last Ice Age ending and previous interglacial warming periods was the arrival of human hunters.

Megafaunal extinctions are closely tied to the arrival of humans in most continents. In North America, the megafaunal extinctions of around 10,000 years ago almost perfectly match what appears to a large-scale migration of hunters using Clovis spear-points beginning about 12,000 years ago. Other areas such as Madagascar, New Zealand and others kept their megafauna for thousands of years after the end of the last ice age until humans arrived, and the moas, elephant birds and giant lemurs almost instantly go *poof*.

In Africa, which is the only region which did not see significant megafaunal extinctions, mankind had always been around, and evolved alongside those megafaunal species. Perhaps that's why those species survived.

However, in other places such as Australia, there is evidence of human colonization at least 20,000 years before the megafaunal extinctions occurred. So human arrival cannot be the only factor either.

So the relationship between the ending of the last ice age and megafaunal extinction is that both occurred at about the same time (approximately 10,000 years ago). The cause and effect relationship between the two is less well known however.

Answer 3

Lets approach this concept from a different point of view. Let's say the Ice age is now in 2006 and the animals are todays men killing each other, becoming extinct....we have enough sperm labs to continue a race, we have the technology to abort if the embryo is male. If China can do it, so can we, the women of the Blue race.....

Answer 4

It's also worth considering adaptation. The end of the ice-age saw the disapperance of the "mega-fauna" such as; mammoths, wooly rhino, Irish elk and cave lions. The herbivores seemed unable to cope with a transaition to a warmer climate. Possibly this was a combination of factors; the spread of forests combined with increased hunting pressure from humans with increasingly sophisticated techniques. Once the herbivores had gone, then the carnivores followed.

Answer 5

The ices ages created a bridge of land across the Bering Straits. This allowed a suite of animals with their associated diseases into the each continent (to Asia from N. America and vice versa). The animals that crossed may have encountered animals that were not adapted to cope with them or their diseases. The animals that crossed include humans, the greatest predator on earth.