A family of scimitar-toothed cats,
For millennia they've thrived here in the icy north,
But right now, they're starving,
The prey the cats hunt is becoming scarce in these valleys,,,
because the climate is warming,
forcing grazing animals to find new feeding grounds,
Today, they might be in luck,
A mammoth herd, trying a new route south,
Taking on such powerful creatures is a huge risk,
But they don't have a choice,
It's the end of the Ice Age,
As the planet heats up, every habitat on Earth is changing,
As ice retreats, water returns to the landscape
and forest animals thrive,
But the rulers of the Ice Age
are facing the end of the world they know,,,
and struggling to survive,
The cats make their move,
The biggest danger?
A huge male,
Unpredictable and powerful,
She's injured but these cats won't give up,
The warming climate has changed migration routes
in this part of the world,
On the coast, its effects are spectacular,
Mineral-rich ice is falling in huge quantities,
filling the shallow sea with nutrients,
This family of sea cows have come here to feed on a forest of lush kelp
fed by the meltwater,
These Ice Age giants are relatives of manatees,,,
but the size of a whale,
Kelp is their favorite food,
But it only grows in shallow coastal waters,,,
so feeding here can be risky,
When the tide goes out, strandings are common,
Out of the water, he's too heavy to move,
And today, this beach is not a good place to be,
A short-faced bear,
500 pounds heavier than a polar bear
and even more deadly,
One of the biggest predators to walk the Earth since the dinosaurs,
He's picked up a scent,
He's never seen anything like it,
But it smells like food,
It's all very confusing,
A short-faced bear could tear most animals to shreds,
Luckily for the sea cow,
he's protected by tough skin an inch thick,
The bear's attack is just an irritation,
Or maybe, a welcome back scratch,
The tide's coming back in,
Fast,
For the bear, the chance of a meal is slipping away,
Time to rejoin his family,
He's got plenty of eating to catch up on,
Here on the coast, the Big Melt means more nutritious kelp for sea cows,,,
while for many Ice Age giants
life is getting harder,
For animals living thousands of miles to the south,
the warming climate is turning this scrubland into a dangerous place,
At night, a Columbian mammoth is safe enough feeding here,
But once the sun comes up,,,
even this giant is in danger,
A lake of tar,
It seeps to the surface from deep within the Earth's crust,
When cold, it's hard and safe to walk on,
But when the temperature reaches 64 degrees,,,
it turns into a sticky death trap,
Today it's claimed a new victim,
North American saber-toothed cats are powerful hunters,
But they won't say no to scavenging an easy meal,
The sun is low, so the tar is still solid underfoot,
Dire wolves,
The saber-toothed cats' deadly rivals,
Pack hunters with a bone-crushing bite,
The pack will kill the cubs if they get the chance,
Sabertooths and dire wolves are an even match,
But the tar has changed everything,
The dire wolves use their powerful sense of smell to find a safe path,
With her cubs in mortal danger,,,
she finds the strength to break free,
The pack are powerless to help,
Tar pits caused the deaths of thousands of Ice Age creatures,
This family has been lucky,
As the temperature rises around the world,
life is also changing dramatically on Ice Age grasslands,
These reindeer are managing,
But survival is getting much harder for Megaloceros,,,
a giant Ice Age deer,
He needs open ground to thrive,
But as water returns to the landscape,
forests are taking over once again,
He's the proud owner of the biggest antlers of all time,
Twelve feet across,
In breeding season they help attract a mate,
At this time of the year, though, they're a burden,
Cave hyenas,
Ferocious predators twice the size of a wolf,
They've hunted these giants for thousands of years,
Megaloceros are fast,
Once they get going they can reach over 50 miles per hour,
With a head start he can outsprint the hyenas,
But they don't give up,
They have an age-old strategy,
If they can stay just close enough to keep him running,,,
and never let him catch his breath,,,
they might run him down,
Maybe sooner than they think,
There's only one way out,
Safe,,,
for now,
As the ice sheets melt,
the Earth's atmosphere gets wetter and wetter,
Here in the tropics,
forests are expanding even faster than in the north,
And they're full of strange animals,,,
like this tenrec,
They love to eat insects,,,
and birds' eggs,
But this one is out of his league,
It is after all the biggest egg of all time,
And it belongs to the biggest bird of all time,
An elephant bird,
Their brightly colored neck wattles help attract a mate,
This giant is about to become a father,
But something is wrong,
His chick is taking its time,
They're running late,
Elephant birds synchronize their egg laying
so the chicks hatch at the same time,
The flock heads off together on a road trip,
When you weigh one ton, flying isn't an option,
No one likes to be left behind,
But this chick just won't be hurried,
The others have already left,
heading for their summer home in the wetlands,
But she's still a bit wobbly on her feet,
For the next nine months he'll be her sole provider and protector,
They need to catch up with the convoy,
Elephant birds travel together for good reason,
The forest is a dangerous place,
Stragglers are a prime target,
Giant fossa,
An ambush predator, fast and agile,
This is no time for a snack,
The convoy has arrived at its destination,
Rain has returned here,,,
creating these wetlands,,,
with plenty of food and drink for all,
But what about the stragglers?
Even the very last chick to hatch has made it,
As wetlands expand, their numbers are growing every year,
The Big Melt is the start of a golden age for elephant birds,
But for the giant stag, the world is closing in,
In a forest, 12-foot antlers are a liability,
Downstream, the hyenas have found a place to cross,
Trapped,
A miraculous escape,
Shedding his antlers saved him,
A new set will grow for the next breeding season,
But the time for his kind and the hyenas is running out,
The saber-toothed cats have been tracking the mammoth herd for two days,
Their patience has paid off,
The male,
injured during the cats' first attack, has fallen behind,
He's vulnerable,
In the cat world, her kind are unique,
She has the power of a lion,,,
and the agility of a leopard,
The cats will survive another winter,
The mammoth herd too,
But their world is changing,
A new predator born of the Ice Age
is spreading to every corner of the planet,
And that story is still unfolding,
Giant mammals ruled the Ice Age,
But almost all of them died out during the Big Melt,
It's wild and super weird to think
that all the big animals that used to exist completely disappeared,
What happened to them?
And why?
One surprising place has some answers,
Los Angeles,
If you came to LA and saw the massive network of freeways,
it would never occur to you this had one of the richest records
of the Ice Age anywhere on the planet,
Like the African savanna on steroids,
Most people don't move to LA to be paleontologists,
But some of us do,
That's why I'm here,
Emily's here because of an extraordinary place,
An ancient pool of tar called the La Brea Tar Pits,
La Brea Tar pits is the richest Ice Age fossil site in the world,
We've found close to five million fossils
and we are still excavating new ones almost every single day,
These pools of tar
have acted as traps that have caught and preserved
anything living that has walked into them
and built up the most incredible record of Ice Age life,
You have this unbelievably rich fossil record at La Brea,
The number of bones
that have come out of this site is extraordinary,
We have probably close to 3,000 saber-toothed cats,
5,000 dire wolves,
This is like an Aladdin's cave of fossils,
What's odd is that the fossil record suddenly stops,,,
as if the animals just vanished off the face of the Earth,
We are able to radiocarbon date the bone
and pinpoint exactly when they disappeared,
What was surprising was that almost all of these species
disappeared exactly the same moment in time,
They all hit this wall at 13,000 years ago and they never show up again,
Those vast landscapes teeming with herds of enormous
Ice Age creatures and they're suddenly just gone,
The disappearance of these animals makes us wonder,
"Why did this happen so suddenly?"
One reason was that the climate changed
too fast at the end of the Ice Age,
California warmed ten degrees in just a few thousand years,
Half of the trees disappeared,
Droughts lasted for decades at a time,
It's possible that the animals
were just simply not able to adapt fast enough to this changing climate,
But the work at La Brea shows something else was going on,
The team started looking at core samples from a nearby lake
to understand what was going on with the environment at this time,
And what's really surprising is there was a huge increase in charcoal,
A new species had arrived,
And with it a devastating new force,
Fire is the most powerful tool people have ever invented,
We set fires to cook, to see at night, to clear land for hunting,
The first people to arrive in this area were living in a complete tinderbox,
People brought in the ignition source,
In tens of thousands of years
there had never been any level of fire activity anywhere close to this,
It's like a bomb going off,
That can completely decimate the environment
and puts huge amounts of pressure on the animals that were living there,
Whether the fires were intentional or accidental isn't known,
but they destroyed animal habitats,
And combined with the hunting skills of our ancestors
it was the perfect storm,
Across the planet,
this combination of climate change and human activity
killed off almost all the Ice Age giants,
leading to the world we know today,