Ice Age Megafauna

468 extinct giant species — Late Pleistocene

The 468 giant animal species wiped out during the last Ice Age, roughly 130,000 to 11,000 years ago — including mammoths, sabre-toothed cats, giant ground sloths and woolly rhinoceroses. These "deep-time" records are compiled from the Paleobiology Database (PBDB, CC BY 4.0); each species' last-appearance range is measured in geological epochs.

🦣 Deep time: the dates here are not calendar years but geological periods spanning tens of thousands of years. Most of these species lived through the Pleistocene ice ages, which witnessed the pre-human and early-human eras.

By Extinction Period

~130–100 kya (early Late Pleistocene) 401~15–11 kya (end-Pleistocene) 67

By Taxonomic Group

Click a species for its extinction period and scientific source.

Even-toed ungulates · 153

Odd-toed ungulates · 71

Carnivores · 69

Proboscideans (elephants & mammoths) · 58

Glyptodonts & armadillos · 46

Marsupial megafauna · 36

Notoungulates (S. American ungulates) · 20

Primates · 8

Sirenians (sea cows) · 7