Extinct Animals That Lived Alongside the Native Americans

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Did you know Native Americans once shared the land with some truly wild creatures that are now extinct? 🦣 From woolly mammoths to saber-toothed cats, these animals roamed North America thousands of years ago. Imagine hunting or just trying to avoid a massive ground sloth or a towering short-faced bear! 🐻‍❄️ It’s kind of mind-blowing to think that humans and these ancient beasts lived side by side. Some of them disappeared due to climate change, others possibly because of overhunting. Either way, it’s a fascinating glimpse into a forgotten world that existed right where we live today.   Credit: Pardusco / Reddit c0rd0n7 / Reddit CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0: Glyptodon unshelled: By Thomas Quine, FunkMonk - https://flic.kr/p/dnnM58, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22328305 Craneo de Glyptodon: By Kevin Walsh, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5085147 Big Carnivore Skeleton: By Jared - https://flic.kr/p/hSho7G, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31535193 Canis dirus: By James St. John - https://flic.kr/p/PX1qSJ, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=55125245 Giant Pleistocene Beaver: By Ryan Somma - https://flic.kr/p/ca5hp5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39456204 Oxydactylus wyomingensis: By James St. John - https://flic.kr/p/Rek1QV, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=83657493 Oxydactylus wyomingensis fossil: By James St. John - https://flic.kr/p/PZERy8, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=83657490 CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/: Giant-beaver: By Stevenj, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1449023 MammothVsMastodon: By Dantheman9758, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4289640 CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0: Museo de Antropología: By Ucriesidelplata, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=131562986 Aenocyon dirus: By Jonathan Chen, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=122327142 Museo de Antropología y: By Ucriesidelplata, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=131562969 Castoroides ohioensis: By Jaaproosart, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=123018366 Woolly mammoth bones: By Silar, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115672405 American Mastodon: By Bloopityboop, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=150059857 CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0: Extinct Bear: By Dennis G. Jarvis - https://flic.kr/p/YHbtKF, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68737721 クリプトドン: By ケケケノケ, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=149891746 CC BY 2.5 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5: Ice age fauna: By Mauricio Antón - Sedwick C (2008) What Killed the Woolly Mammoth? PLoS Biol 6(4): e99. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0060099, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11781070 Animation is created by Bright Side.  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/   Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV   Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our Social Media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightside Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en Telegram: https://t.me/bright_side_official   Stock materials (photos, footages and other): https://www.depositphotos.com https://www.shutterstock.com https://www.eastnews.ru ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.

Transcript

00:00A man went for a walk not far from Buenos Aires in Argentina and found something that looked like a dinosaur egg lying in the mud.

00:09When he shared his find with his family, everyone thought it was a joke, but it was actually very real.

00:15Except it wasn't a dinosaur egg, but a glyptodont shell.

00:20These guys went extinct thousands of years ago.

00:23Some of them grew up to be the size of a small car.

00:27The Paleo-Indians, who were the ancestors of Native Americans, must have had a fun time living alongside those beasts.

00:35People keep finding similar black scaly shells, which are fossils of glyptodonts in the Americas.

00:41These creatures thrived in South America for tens of millions of years and also spread up north.

00:47They had thick armor called a carapace and tough, grooved teeth for eating grass.

00:53They weren't always giant, but it looks like a colder climate before the Ice Age, with open woodlands and plenty of grass, helped them evolve.

01:02It's pretty hard to hide when you're huge, so they may have developed their fused armor to protect themselves.

01:09One of the most famous types had a long tail with spikes that it used to fight other glyptodonts for territory or mates.

01:16Although they look similar, the ancient glyptodonts were really different from today's armadillos.

01:24Glyptodonts had a hard, heavy armor made of fused plates, and today's armadillos have flexible armor and can roll up into a ball to protect their soft tummies.

01:33Plus, glyptodonts ate grass using their grooved teeth, and armadillos prefer insects for lunch.

01:42But despite all the differences, recent studies of their DNA showed that glyptodonts actually belonged to the armadillo family.

01:50If you think the glyptodont was scary, just wait till you meet the giant, short-faced bear.

01:58This bad guy grew to almost twice the height of Michael Jordan when it stood on its hind legs.

02:03It also weighed over 1,500 pounds, and it was able to run at the speed of over 40 miles per hour.

02:11However, this bear preferred meat to all other foods.

02:15Even its skull and teeth were designed for slicing through meat, and it had forward-facing eyes that gave it sharp vision.

02:23Its strong jaws and large muscles helped it crush bones to get to the nutritious marrow inside.

02:30The giant, short-faced bear lived in places like Minnesota and west of the Mississippi River, all the way up to Alaska.

02:37It went after or scavenged big animals like bison, musk oxen, deer, and even ground sloths.

02:45But it eventually went extinct because its prey didn't survive the Ice Age.

02:51Today, the only living relative of the short-faced bears is the spectacled bear from South America.

02:57This guy is much smaller, about the size of a black bear, and it eats both plants and meat.

03:04Game of Thrones fans, the next one is for you.

03:08The orphaned wolf cubs adopted by the Stark family in the epic series were inspired by dire wolves.

03:15Their name translates from Latin as terrible wolf.

03:20These great-uncles of modern dogs were almost 5 feet from head to tail and weighed around 150 to 200 pounds.

03:29The oldest record of the dire wolf is from 250,000 years ago.

03:33They adapted well to different conditions and lived pretty much all over North America, from as far north as Alaska to down into southern Mexico.

03:43They went extinct around 10,000 years ago, soon after the last Ice Age.

03:48They most likely just lost their source of food.

03:52The closest we have to dire wolves now is the gray wolf, but don't get too upset.

03:58Scientists think they could be able to bring the dire wolf back to life.

04:01They can combine intact straps of their DNA, recovered from the museum specimens and the genome of modern dogs.

04:09One animal you definitely wouldn't want to be on the de-extinction program is the saber-toothed cat.

04:17This bad guy lived in prehistoric North America and parts of South America.

04:21And nope, it's not related to modern tigers or other cats.

04:27It just went extinct.

04:30It had the title of the most fearsome Ice Age predator for a long time,

04:35until scientists found out at least one species of it was more like a kitty cat.

04:41Smilodon, by the way, Diego from Ice Age was one of those,

04:45could only chomp down with one-third of the force of modern lions.

04:48But it could open its mouth at a 120 degrees angle,

04:53and it could wrestle even large prey to the ground with its powerful body,

04:57with disproportionately thick front legs and strong neck.

05:01The kitty was probably just too afraid to use its long and narrow teeth that could break easily.

05:07And one more detail.

05:09It had to have lips that could stretch well for the jaws to open wide,

05:13so it most likely drooled like a St. Bernard.

05:15Well, at least their teeth grew twice as fast as those of modern lions,

05:20and fully formed by the age of three.

05:24The giant beavers, called castoroids, must have grown at the same rate,

05:29or so to get as big as a couch.

05:32They were about 8 feet long and weighed 200 pounds,

05:35which is as heavy as a large refrigerator.

05:37They had huge, 6-inch long front teeth for gnawing,

05:42a narrow tail, and long, shaggy fur.

05:45This giant creature lived alongside mammoths and saber-toothed tigers in the woodlands of North America.

05:51Like today's beavers, the giant beaver probably spent a lot of time in the water,

05:56since it was too heavy to move quickly on land.

05:58Unfortunately, we don't know for sure if giant beavers built equally giant dams.

06:04Even if they did, none of those structures survived over time.

06:09Some people think a giant beaver built a 4-foot-tall dam in Ohio,

06:13but it's just a guess.

06:15Eventually, the giant beaver disappeared,

06:17just like other big animals from the last ice age.

06:21Early human settlers in North America may have sped up its extinction,

06:25as they probably liked its thick fur and meat.

06:29By the ice age, mastodons,

06:31some remote offsprings of the early elephants from Africa,

06:34crossed a land bridge that once connected Siberia and Alaska,

06:38and made it to North America.

06:40Mastodons, like woolly mammoths,

06:42had thick, shaggy fur that helped them keep warm in the cold climate of the ice age.

06:47But unlike the mammoths, who mostly grazed,

06:51mastodons were mostly browsers.

06:52They like to eat leaves from shrubs and the lower branches of trees.

06:58Scientists often find woolly mammoth fossils together,

07:01which means they probably lived in groups, like family herds.

07:05Mastodon fossils are usually lying alone.

07:08This means they may have preferred living on their own

07:10and only came together to mate or for a short time with their young.

07:15Sadly, both mastodons and woolly mammoths went extinct around 11,000 years ago,

07:20not long after the ice age.

07:23Scientists think this may have happened because of changes in weather patterns,

07:27fewer food sources, and possibly early humans.

07:31They figured out that one mastodon could feed a tribe for a week

07:34and dress them for years.

07:38You can mostly find camels in deserts in places like North Africa and the Middle East now.

07:43But scientists believe they actually came from North America,

07:47especially the lands west of the Mississippi River.

07:50Fossils show that camels appeared on Earth about 44 million years ago.

07:57In 2015, a team of scientists from the University of Louisiana

08:00discovered the bones of a giant ancient camel in Oregon.

08:04This camel was between 12 and 14 feet tall, like a modern giraffe.

08:11It lived around 7 million years ago and had a long neck to help it reach high plants.

08:15About 6 million years ago, some early camels crossed into Asia over the Bering Strait land bridge.

08:23Once they arrived in Asia, these camels split into two types we know today.

08:27The Bactrian camel, with two humps, and the Dromedary camel, with one hump.

08:33You won't find wild camels in North America anymore,

08:36but some of their relatives, such as llamas, alpacas, and guanacos, still live in South America.

08:45That's it for today.

08:46So hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends.

08:51Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the bright side.

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