The Final Ice Age Contraversy

New animals for the heated world basically ate the plants and eveded predators better than the old ones. The new predators and new herbivores basically just killed off the old herbivores and carnivores. And the plants changed, so they also killed of the herbivores.

They didn't have the flexibility to adapt anymore and were outcompeted quickly because of it. Many animals get outcompeted without directly competing with another species in the sense that one animal's prey depletes and so do they, and another predator raises in numbers because it doesn't risk competing as much. Eventually, the old predator is wiped out. At least that's what I've picked up from research on this stuff.

I specialize in the Mesozoic, but as far as the final Ice Age goes, I'm guessing, as with many things, they could not re-adapt fast enough. These changes were taking place in a very short amount of time. A few thousand years or so. The dinosaurs for example had a couple million years to adapt and change between major events(excluding their extinction which happened somewhat quickly as well).

I have to concur with RexFan: it seems that the end of the Pleistocene brought some rather quick climatic changes with it. This had an environmental impact way too profound for some of the more massive Vertebrates to adapt to. Interesstingly enough though, it looks like of all the Megafauna that went extinct during the last 50.000 years, nearly 50% went extinct during an event appx. 12.000 years ago called the 'Younger Dryas Event'. This event marks a rebound of the climate after it started to get warmer, at the end of the ice age. That means that these animals didn't die because of the cliamte getting warmer but because of a very short-term re-cooling of the climate and the accompanying migration of vegetation zones to the south. Cheers, The_Captn