With every advancing epoch, Miocene to Pliocene to Pleistocene, twenty-four million to five million to nearly two million years ago, the fauna had tumbled by the score over a cliff of extinction. Martin began the weekend thumbing through the time line of mammalian evolution leading up to the Pleistocene. Martin was preparing a seminar on the biology of the Pleistocene, an epoch beginning 1.8 million years ago with the onset of its signature glaciers, and ending - as Martin was now reminded - with the sudden and sweeping disappearance of so many great animals. "One wintry weekend outside Montreal in 1956, a young postgraduate ecologist found himself hunkered inside against the cold, pondering death. With the arrival of man, the megafauna of North America - giant camels, beavers as big as bears, and the giant saber-tooth cat - disappeared: Today's selection - from Where The Wild Things Were by William Stolzenburg.
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