Wild New World - Hardcover

Some 20,000 years ago the continent was in the grips of the last great Ice Age with most of Canada covered by a huge ice sheet--even Florida was on the decidedly cool side. The only advantage of the deep-freeze was that animals could wander from Asia into North America without getting their feet wet. So much ocean water was locked up in ice that sea level fell drastically and opened the Bering "highway" from Siberia to Alaska. Without this connection life would have been very different in the Americas. It might also have been very different if humans had not also managed to make the crossing just before sea levels rose again and cut the continent off.

Recreating Ice-Age North America is authored by the Wild New World team of BBC producers Miles Barton, Nigel Bean, Stephen Dunleavy, Ian Gray and Adam White, all of whom are science graduates and know their stuff. How the vast continent of North America came to be the equivalent of an Ice Age game park is a wonderful story. It's full of impressive beasts--huge herds of mammoth, bison, caribou, horse and the top carnivores that predated upon them, the big cats and then humans. The major players are given their own profiles and vital statistics. All are illustrated with computer-graphic reconstructions set in real landscapes that look a lot better in the book's still photos than as the slightly stilted moving images on TV. The big question in the history of North America's big game is did they fall because of changing climate and environments at the end of the Ice Age or were they pushed by the hand of man? With Wild New World: Recreating Ice-Age North America, a more accurate picture the wildlife and landscape of North America as it would have looked over 13,000 years ago will be revealed. --Douglas Palmer