Many North American animals went extinct after the last ice age, with humans believed to be the cause. Megafauna, including the American lion and ancient bison, are mostly extinct. Other extinct animals include the giant short-faced bear, saber-toothed tiger, and wooly mammoth.
Like everywhere else, numerous animals in North America went extinct shortly after the last ice age ended, some 12,000 years ago. Humans are thought to be the cause. Other animals went extinct millions of years earlier, during the Pleistocene. Many of these are large animals and are referred to as megafauna. Little of the North American megafauna survives: examples include American bears and bison. Of all of North America’s extinct animals, most of them went extinct as humans became more numerous.
Some of the fascinating extinct animals that lived in North America include the American lion, which is the largest lion subspecies to ever exist, and is 25% larger than the African lion (extinct 8000 BC); the Ancient Bison, which was the most numerous large herbivore for 8,000 years until it became extinct around 8000 BC; Cuvieronius, large elephant with spiral tusks (extinct 7000 BC); the Dire Wolf, a large wolf extinct in 8000 BC; the Giant Beaver, up to 2.5 m (8.2 ft) long that lived around the Great Lakes up to 10,000 years ago; and the Giant Hutia, a rodent that could grow to the size of a bear, which lived in Puerto Rico until just 3,000 years ago. Except for the ancient bison and dire wolf, few of these extinct animals have living relatives.
There are many other extinct animals from North America. The giant short-faced bear, which is the largest bear that ever lived, seven feet tall and ten feet long (extinct 10,500 BC); Glyptodon, an armored armadillo-like animal the size of a VW Bug, that originally evolved in South America but moved to Texas; the famous saber-toothed tiger, which was a major predator in Pleistocene North America; the well-known Wooly Mammoth, with adaptations to ice age life, and is often found frozen in Canadian permafrost; and the American cheetah, a cheetah-like animal most closely related to the modern Puma, and which is known only from bone fragments.
There are numerous other extinct animals from North America throughout its hundreds of millions of years of natural history, but this article has only covered those that went extinct more recently.
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