San Diego Pleistocene Mammals May 27, 2010

As recently as 200,000 years ago, San Diego was home to such giant beasts as mammoths, mastodons, bison, and ground sloths. Fossils of smaller mammals that no longer live in the region, like tapirs and capybaras, demonstrate that our ecology has dramatically changed since the Pleistocene. View actual fossils that have been recently unearthed in coastal San Diego from Ice Age sediments. Learn about additional fossils from the region, and see fleshed-out artistic reconstructions.