Soon after humans crossed the Bering land bridge into North America some
13,000 years ago, almost 75 percent of the continent’s large mammals (those
weighing more than 45 kilograms) disappeared (color). One of the goals of
Pleistocene rewilding is to restore some of these species or close proxies to the
American West. For example, the same species of lion and cheetah that once
lived in North America survive today in Africa; the African or Asian elephant
could substitute for the extinct mammoth; and Bactrian camels might stand
in for the extinct Camelops.
COPYRIGHT 2007 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.
When The West Was Really Wild
