This steppe, aptly named the mammoth-steppe likely contained a rather productive grassland which was very accommodating to ice-age grazers like the woolly mammoth. Sporting over 12-foot-long tusks that weighed next to 200 lbs., the woolly mammoth resembled the modern elephant (Matheus, pp. 55).
As opposed to having an exposed hide as does today’s modern elephant however, the woolly mammoth was covered in a shaggy coat of warm insulating hair complete with a tuft at the top of the head. Unlike modern elephants, the woolly mammoth was exclusively a grazer, roaming the steppe in large herds as it grasped with ease the vegetation underfoot. The woolly mammoth did this using a bifurcated end of its trunk much in the same fashion as your hand with an opposable thumb can grab something (Matheus, pp. 57).
One creature whom you would no doubt come across when embarking on a safari of the ice-age Alaskan steppe is the steppe bison. Similar in several ways to the modern prairie bison that roam the plains of North America today, the steppe bison differed in its foraging behavior. This is a simple result of the varying vegetative patterns between modern day North America and that of the ice-age steppe (Matheus, pp.59).
Ultimately, the steppe bison didn’t need to adapt to be long-range migratory foragers when it came to finding food, as the modern day bison of North America are. The steppe bison moved about in short distances and in smaller groups as they searched for the intermittent yet more or less year round supply of vegetation they could find (as opposed to wide open plains covered with large yet seasonal tracks of grasses that the plains bison feed on today) (Matheus, pp. 59).
A third major Pleistocene animal on the mammoth-steppe would be the ice-age horse. After bison, horses were the second most commonly occurring mammal in ice-age Alaska . During the late Pleistocene, when fossils are most abundant, evidence points to two species of horse existing on the ice-age steppe. One was a type of miniature horse and the other was slightly larger, similar in appearance to the wild Asian ass of the modern day (Matheus, pp. 62).
Horses had grazing strategies that made the ice-age steppe a perfect habitat for them. As a result of the fact that the horse had a single stomach, their diets allowed for them to settle for rather low-quality vegetation (which was often common fare on the ice-age steppe); they just needed to eat a lot of it (Matheus, pp. 62).
In contrast, the steppe bison were ruminants (animals with multi-chambered stomachs) and as such, they didn’t need to eat as much food but they simply needed to incorporate higher quality plants into their diets. This curious quantity/quality dynamic amongst the diets of the ice-age horse and the steppe bison ensured that the two species could more or less co-exist peaceably without any substantial food competition between the two of them (Matheus, pp. 63).
After discussing the ice-age grazers, what is there to be said about the ice-age carnivores? For one thing, the diversity of herbivorous grazers on the steppe meant more meat for the predators. Steppe lions could probably be found stalking bison in the hills while saber-toothed cats could be found in ravines and brush aimed at taking down larger pray. On the flats and the plateaus of the steppe, the cheetah’s quick bursts of speed allowed them to predate on the horses (Matheus, pp. 67).
One monster carnivore, the giant short-faced bear, likely out-competed any of the other carnivores for food. They were twice the size of a modern-day grizzly and they were strong enough to be able to crack open and eat the innards of bones. Why however, do so many of these ice-age predatory beasts become absent as we approach modern times? Much of it has to do with the fact that meat-eaters, unlike the grazers had very specialized diets (Matheus, pp. 68).
As the numbers of herbivores shrunk throughout the late Pleistocene, the meat-eaters lost food source after food source. To add to this, many of the predators that you would find on the ice-age steppe of Alaska wouldn’t have been “behaviorally wired (Matheus, pp. 68)” to adapt to an herbivorous or omnivorous lifestyle mainly as the result of a relatively small brain as is the case with the saber-toothed cat.
There is a relatively abundant collection of herbivores in Alaska today like muskoxen, moose, and caribou to name a few but, in terms of their predators, the list is shorter. Lynx, wolves, and both brown and black bears are some of the big examples of the modern day predators that you’ll find up in Alaska today.
The brown and black bears of Alaska and North America
are perfect examples of predators that were able to adapt and survive. Why? They have adapted their diets to accommodate plants and berries in the months with sparse prey; i.e., the winter months (not to mention the fact that hibernation plays a major role as well). It is as simple as that. All in all, whether you’re in ice-age
-Information found within this piece was accrued from research from the following publication(s):
