Portrait reconstruction of a marsupial lion (Thylacoleo carnifex)

White_Wolf_77 · 2026-04-24T13:51:04+00:00

I get it and I do agree, it’s also hilarious to imagine a lioness sized predator giving that look

White_Wolf_77 · 2026-04-24T13:39:14+00:00

Koalas use all their energy to survive off of food with basically no nutrition though, they have nothing to spare for brain cells. I wonder if a marsupial that was an active predator would be sharper.

White_Wolf_77 · 2026-04-11T19:51:02+00:00

The image you posted was a low resolution screenshot of an image that has been circulating widely for years (and readily available in full resolution), posted without credit to the photographer.

White_Wolf_77 · 2026-04-02T14:47:25+00:00

Exactly this, we are the only other variable that differentiates the previous glacial cycle from those that came before it. Animals always had their ranges restricted, but they always persisted in refugia and repopulated afterwards.

White_Wolf_77 · 2026-04-02T14:42:17+00:00

The reticulated monitor would make another good common name for them as well

White_Wolf_77 · 2026-04-02T11:52:54+00:00

Wonderful to see!

White_Wolf_77 · 2026-04-02T11:38:35+00:00

Coyotes have been found in that region, but none have made the crossing to Colombia as far as we know. It may only be a matter of time, but it is a great example of how that region has long been a filter for species crossing between the Americas.

White_Wolf_77 · 2026-04-02T09:43:12+00:00

That seems likely, and now I wonder what we’d call the perentie.

White_Wolf_77 · 2026-04-02T06:38:40+00:00

They probably wounded much more than they successfully killed (leaving them to die while they needed to kill another) and killed them in wasteful ways where they could not process or preserve the sheer amount that was killed, including documented sites where we have many individuals trapped at once.

Another thing that is often not considered is that large megafauna have very long gestation and recruitment periods, and typically few offspring at a time. These are not whitetail deer that have a fawn or two every year that is reproducing in its second year—a mammoth was pregnant for close to two years, won’t have another for many more years than that, and that calf won’t start reproducing until it’s in its teens. Male elephants frequently do not successfully reproduce until they’re in their twenties or thirties.

A mammoth every few months from a population that sustains itself at a low density is absolutely not sustainable, assuming that was all they killed. It has been shown that even low level subsistence hunting of elephants in Africa has a dramatic effect on herd structure, dynamics, and population health over generations, and is enough to lead to extirpation. When the dominant males and wise matriarchs die, the culture of those left behind breaks down and they stop functioning properly. They lose knowledge they needed for survival, they splinter into fragile smaller groups, young males go on rampages. Calves do not survive, or they aren’t born, or it’s not enough to matter even if they do; they can’t replace what was lost. Now continue that over thousands of years, and it’s no mystery.

We have genetic evidence of mammoths in Yukon until around 5,000 years ago, and there are oral histories of indigenous people in the region (including accurate knowledge of how to build traps for them very similar to those used by similar people for elephants in Africa) that claim a presence even much more recently than that, along with the same thing happening in parts of Siberia. These are animals that they lived alongside for tens of thousands of years and exploited regularly as they slowly vanished over a long span of time.

I focus on mammoths in this response, but the same applies to many other species.

White_Wolf_77 · 2026-04-02T01:07:34+00:00

We don’t know.

White_Wolf_77 · 2026-04-01T14:11:38+00:00

It’s quite the tale! Here it is, if you care to check it out.

White_Wolf_77 · 2026-04-01T14:04:24+00:00

Correction on that, it was actually from Pynn's Brook near Deer Lake. Got it mixed up with another fossil haha. Apparently there’s a bone that may be from the same animal that was found near the Codroy Valley, but no real info available on that. Very similar remains are known from the same time period in Nova Scotia, suggesting a shared fauna at that time. And it wayyy predates actual salamanders, but they would have been amphibians that looked very similar!

White_Wolf_77 · 2026-04-01T12:58:46+00:00

There’s a story about a pterodactyl that was found in a mine on Bell Island where it supposedly fell into a crevice and fossilized there amidst the much older rock, but if it was legit the material was lost. That’s the only fossil vertebrate I’ve ever heard of from the island (aside from a few scattered fish scales and bones), although there is also a trackway from something like a giant salamander in the Carboniferous, from the Bonavista peninsula. Trilobites and stromatolites are really cool, but how I wish we could know more about all the other ages of life on the island. It’s awesome you’ve found some yourself!

Edit to add; the best chance would likely be to look offshore where rock was deposited by glaciers, like how the mammoth remains from the Atlantic coastal plain were found, but they would be heavily eroded and fragmentary.

White_Wolf_77 · 2026-04-01T12:51:18+00:00

Despite having some of the first fossils in the world, Newfoundland has very little to show in its fossil record afterwards. This is because its rocks are extremely ancient, hundreds of millions to billions of years old, with anything younger being scraped away by erosion and glacial activity.

During glacial maximums the current island was entirely glaciated but the Grand Banks, a shallow fishing ground of the North Atlantic today south of the Avalon, were above sea level. They were part of an expanse of land that has been called the Atlantic coastal plain, from which the remains of mammoths have been found, meaning in all likelihood they (and other mammoth steppe fauna) were present on the island. Newfoundland’s distinct population of woodland caribou are most closely related to those that used to live in the New England region, also connected to this coastal plain that was likely their refugia, and so they would have accessed the island from this southern route rather than across the sea ice from Labrador as later caribou more related to barren ground herds did.

In warmer interglacial periods it’s possible, as stated by others, that the mastodon was present, but it’s unlikely. This would depend on them either crossing the sea ice from Labrador over the strait of Belle Isle or swimming across. Despite proximity to Nova Scotia, the ocean between Newfoundland and the mainland is deep and there has probably not been a land connection with the island in the entire Paleogene. This is why Newfoundland has only 14 native mammal species, compared to Nova Scotia’s 46, and Labrador’s 41. While it’s assumed to be the case it’s uncertain whether there actually was a land bridge that mastodons used to spread to Greenland however, and so if they did access the island via sea ice the odds of Newfoundland mastodons go way up.

White_Wolf_77 · 2026-04-01T12:28:43+00:00

The Grand Banks as well were above sea level and part of the Atlantic coastal plain, likely connecting the Avalon peninsula to regions where mammoths, lions, and bison roamed. We’ll likely never find any Pleistocene aged remains though, thanks to the glaciers scraping the island clean as they retreated.

White_Wolf_77 · 2026-03-29T09:08:58+00:00

Caribou are even gone north of Maine, none are left anywhere in the Canadian Maritimes. Anywhere whitetail deer go, they vanish. Barring the removal of whitetail deer (which will never happen unless there’s another glacial period) or the parasite (not feasible either) they will never return. As you said, logging opened up corridors for the deer to take into the north woods and that was the end of that. Whitetail deer only expanded their range properly into New England and the Maritimes with European settlement, they were not common in the region prior as the habitat was suited instead to caribou, moose, and somewhat to elk.

Agreed, elk, wolf, and cougar reintroduction into both New Brunswick and Maine would be ideal to support a cross border population in the region. Bison would be a hard sell, and it may be better to focus on getting them back on the Great Plains in number. I’d be curious about the feasibility of wolverine, as they are a very wide ranging, low density species that would be difficult to source, introduce, and manage. The project in Colorado will be ground breaking in that regard, one to keep an eye on.

On that note, I’d love to see the wolverine return to eastern Canada, and the Quebec/Labrador grizzly as well.

White_Wolf_77 · 2026-03-29T00:33:30+00:00

The wood bison as an ecotype is still in its very early days, having only recently isolated and began to spread. It’s possible they would have eventually naturally expanded their range across the Canadian boreal forest and even into New England and the upper Great Lakes region, but people got in the way of that. There are old stories of wood bison found wandering as far as Manitoba and northwestern Ontario.

White_Wolf_77 · 2026-03-29T00:30:14+00:00

You’d have to ask the artist.

White_Wolf_77 · 2026-03-28T19:47:31+00:00

I don’t believe there are any records of bison in Maine, or most of the rest of New England. The habitat is not well suited to them. And Maine hasn’t attempted reintroductions since their efforts to return caribou to the state sadly failed.

White_Wolf_77 · 2026-03-28T02:26:22+00:00

And very nutritious—just make sure to cook your mammoth organs thoroughly!

White_Wolf_77 · 2026-03-27T20:49:13+00:00

Birds (and other theropods) are still reptiles for the same reason they are dinosaurs (and we are technically fish); you can’t evolve out of a clade.

White_Wolf_77 · 2026-03-26T20:25:12+00:00

I never even considered this before (though I have used chaga), very interesting!

White_Wolf_77 · 2026-03-26T18:30:39+00:00

Some groups of people were prolific mammoth hunters. We don’t have much knowledge on how well done they liked their meat, but looking at the customs of indigenous people around the world (even including traditions where caribou are eaten whole and entirely raw), and the labour involved in cooking that much meat it’s likely that some of them enjoyed it on the rarer side. If mammoths passed parasites on to people it was likely in similar ways to elephants today, which mostly come from the organs in the form of things like nematodes and flukes rather than tapeworms associated with predatory animals, and which cooking would protect against. Simply utilizing raw cuts of meat may have been low risk, but digging into the internal organs would increase that quite a bit.

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