The Mammoth Steppe

A detailed Summary of The Mammoth Steppe

The Mammoth Steppe was a unique and fragile ecosystem of the Pleistocene Era. The many plants and animals that thrived in this ecosystem, supported by the cool, arid climate, balanced the land for more than 1.5 million years. With the help of bison fossils, scientists have been able to fit the pieces of this mysterious puzzle together to understand how this unique, yet fragile ecosystem worked and how everything coexisted in order to keep this ecosystem going. Finding out how this unique ecosystem functioned, we can then find the missing piece that made the ecosystem of the Mammoth Steppe fall apart, all with the help of fossils of the Steppe Bison.

The Mammoth Steppe is a band of land that almost circled the planet right below the ice sheets of the Pleistocene Era. This area of land stretching across Russia and Canada...prairie-like land spanned what's now called Beringia (Herman). This occurred due to the lower sea level near the poles, exposing the broad continental shelf that connects Siberia to Alaska. But the steppe covers more land than just Beringia, the Mammoth Steppe territory stretches from the Alaskan area westward to the coasts of Europe and even goes as far south as parts of Africa an

A wide variety of animals lived on the steppe, including exotic animals that one would not expect to find in such cold climates. "Above the huge North American ice sheet, wooly mammoths, bison and horses lived on an arid grassland in the unglaciated Yukon and Alaska. Lions roared in the white night above the Arctic Circle, and the camels and horses fed on the North Slope of Alaska's Brooks Range." (Guthrie)

Animals in relation to their food source play a major factor in the natural cycle of an ecosystem. We now have a better understanding of the megafauna and the grasses they lived on, but not all of the animals of the Mammoth Steppe were herbivores. To complete this picture, we must understand how the carnivores in relation to the herbivores interacted with each other. "The late glacial fauna was rich in biological diversity. Large herds of such large herbivores inhabited the steppe and fed on the grasses, herbs, and forbs growing there. These herds were in turn preyed upon by large carnivores such as wolf, lion, and spotted hyena." (Guthrie)

Not only is the Mammoth Steppe a special area of land, it was a separate ecosystem. At the beginning of the Pleistocene Era, about two million years ago, enormous fields of rice covered most of North America. Nearly half of Alaska was covered with ice or glaciers, yet the middle of Alaska was left untouched. This left opportunity for life, and so "a vast grassland was thus born" (Herman) thriving in the cool arid climate that was characteristic of the Mammoth Steppe. The climate was cool and dry, temperatures reached 50 degrees below zero, but for the magafauna the steppe supported, this extreme degree of temperature was not a problem. Gigantic wooly herbivores thrived on the cold weather of the Mammoth Steppe and lived in it quite comfortably.

The climate of the Mammoth Steppe was detrimental to the existence of the steppe. Without it, everything from plant life to the animals would have been different. The climate supported the cool, arid conditions necessary for the growth of the nutrient rich grasses that grew on the steppe to support the unique and abundant herds of animals that lived on the steppe. So when the climate changed, a lot of things began to happen.

The grass of the step

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Approximate Word count = 1530
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Science