Actually, Joe, if I remember correctly, the mammoths and mastodons were cold-weather creatures. Large mammals lose their body heat slower and are better adapted to cold than smaller mammals. Even modern elephants can take much colder temperatures than central African or equatorial Asian norms. Just look at all the elephants in temperate-zone zoos, outdoors in the dead of winter- like right here in Salt Lake. Mammoths and their kin were hunted to extinction by humans, like Irish deer and sabre-toothed cats, not killed off by climate change. They had plentiful grassy summer range, similar to parts of present-day Alaska, where today Dall sheep dig through deep snow to uncover winter forage. The large mammoths probably had a much easier time locating buried grass than the sheep do. They may have also supplemented their winter diets with certain barks, brush, and evergreens. The few found frozen in arctic ice by paleontologists were rare, unfortunate individuals, and not representative of mass freezings of the species as a whole. I don't think any mammoth remains have ever been found north of the arctic circle, where of course there is no forage, but in the forested areas south of there, there is plenty for grazing animals to eat, even in winter. It supports huge populations of elk and carribou as well as the wild sheep. The mammoths thrived in ice-age conditions, until they encountered humans.

From: Joe Bauman <bau@desnews.com> But of course, Michael, when those mammoths were frozen the climate at that location must have been mild enough to support those huge semi-elephants. They ate a lot, and it wasn't frozen tundra.

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