Unusual gift for boyfriend, girlfriend gift, husband gift, new home gift.
This is a European forest elephant that lived in Europe during the Pleistocene. Along with the forest rhinoceros, "Merka" was one of the main ecosystem engineers in Europe.
Spotted hyenas once had ranges that stretched far outside of Africa and into more northerly latitudes across Europe and into Russia. It’s possible they could have reached the British Islands via the land bridge that formed due to lowered sea levels (it is referred to as “Doggerland”).
Not all ice age giants are equally well known. Euceratherium is one of these rarely mentioned animals that roamed North America together with mammoth etc.
Here's some Mammuthus primigenius reconstructions to start your day. Fossil evidence shows that good parents would knit festive scarves to keep their babies warm while their thick fur was growing in.
Once again we dip back into Australia in the Pleistocene, a time when there were even MORE wild and dangerous animals than exist today. Last year we highlighted the marsupial lion, and while it had deadly killing tools, it was far from the biggest, or the only major predator in Prehistoric Australia; just one of them was Megalania. Scientifically known as Varanus priscus, is estimated to measure over 20 feet long, making it the largest lizard to ever exist, larger than it's modern surviving relative, the Komodo dragon, which also evolved in Australia before being limited to islands in Indonesia.
The beauty of the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) in an amazing life-size model by Blue Rhino Studio made for the Bell Museum in Saint Paul, USA
Artwork elephant - Forest European elephant - Palaeoloxodon antiquus
This is a European forest elephant that lived in Europe during the Pleistocene. Along with the forest rhinoceros, "Merka" was one of the main ecosystem engineers in Europe.
This exclusive and unrepeatable painting can be purchased here:
https://www.etsy.com/KapelkaStudio/listing/1498323241
Pleistocene to Holocene. 125,000 to 9,500 years ago.
We now know their range extended into Eastern Asia! Before the discovery of a piece of mandible in Eastern China, we thought they only lived in North and South America.
Some of my works appear on @252mya, this series is a recent contribution. On 4 posters I explored the diversity of several groups during the Pleistocene into the Holocene. Birds, Tortoises, Crocodiles and Elephants were the subjects of these initial posters, more might be added in the future.
It is Incredible to see how much megafauna we JUST missed.