During the ice age, diverse and unique animals walked the earth. While many of these prehistoric animals have gone extinct, there are several that are still living. Most of them were giant in size (leading them to be termed as megafauna since they weighed above 100 pounds) like mammoths, mastodons, ground sloths, etc., but there was also medium (deer, dire wolf, peccary) and small animals (mole, deer mouse, badger) in the era.
List of Animals in the Ice Age
Extinct Ice Age Animals
- American Cheetah
- American Mastodon
- American Scimitar Cat
- Beringian Lion
- Cave Bear
- Cave Lion
- Diprotodon
- Dire wolf
- Flat-headed Peccary
- Giant Beaver
- Giant Short-faced Bear
- Ground Sloth
- Irish Elk
- Jefferson’s Ground Sloth
- Long-nosed Peccary
- Mammoth
- Mastodon
- Megalania
- Saber-tooth Cat
- Saber-tooth Tiger
- Short-faced Bear
- Stegodon “Roofed Tooth”
- Steppe Bison
- Woolly Mammoth
- Yukon Horse
- Yukon’s Camel
Ice Age Animals That Are Still Alive
Ice Age Animals by Regions
North American Ice Age Animals: Dire Wolf, Mastadon, Jefferson’s Ground Sloth, Cave Lion, Mammoth, Short-faced Bear, American Cheetah,Ground Sloth, Giant Beaver
Australian Ice Age Animals: Diprotodon, Megalania
African Ice Age Animals: Zebra, Elephant, Rhinoceros
European Ice Age Animals: Irish Elk, Steppe Bison, Saiga Antelope, Cave Bear, Mammoth
Adaptations
- The ice age animals had hairy bodies to beat the freezing weather
- Many animals had big bodies, a size that did well in the cold.
- A large number of these animals, like rhinos, had horns to sweep the snow cover, allowing them to reach the vegetation below.
Interesting Facts
- With its large bulbous nose and long curved horns, the saiga antelope is one of the weirdest-looking animals to have survived the ice age.
FAQs
Q. How did animals survive the ice age? A. The marine ice age animals survived with the help of the glacial air pockets. They got the necessary oxygen for respiration from glacial meltwater when the ocean’s surface was frozen.
Q. How did the ice age animals die? A. The ice age mainly affected the megafauna as they were the ones that mostly became extinct at the end of the last ice age (Pleistocene Epoch). Various theories point to the possible causes. They suggest climate changes, human invasion using sharp weapons, contagious diseases, and retreating ice sheets, among other factors responsible for killing them.
Q. What did animals eat during the ice age? A. They ate the same kinds of food as modern-day animals. The herbivores of the ice age time period ate shrubs and grasses, while the carnivores ate other animals.
Q. What were the most dangerous ice age animals? A. Apex predators like saber-tooth cat, American lion, giant short-faced bear, American cheetah, and dire wolf were some of the most dangerous animals from the period.
Q. What ice age animals were scary? A. Dire wolves and mammoths were some scary animals living during the ice age.
Q. What were ice age sea animals? A. Gastropods, brachiopods, and bivalves lived in seawater during that time.
