Mammoth
A giant mammal, it was related to the modern-day elephant. Its ancestors migrated out of Africa about 3.5 million years ago, and settled in northern Eurasia and North America. The creature was 4 metres tall and weighed over 6 tons. They were covered in fur and their tusks were 5 metres long! The Mammoth disappeared 10,000 years ago: humans hunted Mammoths for food and the climate changed and destroyed its ecosystem. The last Mammoth population in the world was in Wrangel Island, in the Arctic Ocean, around 1700BC.
Sabre-toothed Cat
Often called Sabre-toothed tigers or Sabre-toothed lions, they existed 55 million to 11,700 years ago. Sabre-toothed Cats were carnivores with long tusks, which in some species were 50cm long. Their body was bigger than a tiger or a lion, and more similar to a bear: they were stronger than faster. They were excellent hunters and hunted animals like sloths and mammoths. These felines opened their jaws at an angle of 120 degrees – two times wider than a modern lion!
Stellers Sea Cow
Named after George Steller, the person that discovered the creature in 1741, Stellers Sea Cow was a large herbivorous mammal. It was 8 to 9 metres long and weighed around 8-10 tons. It inhabited the southwest of Alaska and the Bering Sea. The mammal was domesticated and spent most of the time eating kelp. As it too big to dive, it was very easy for human hunters to kill it. 27 years after its discovery by Europeans, the Steller’s Sea Cow was hunted to extinction.
Aurochs
The aurochs were the original cow, literally. These animals were the larger, wild ancestors of the modern, domestic cows we know today. The existed about 2 million years ago and they were domesticated about 10,000 years ago. They disappeared in the 17th century. The last living aurochs died in Poland in 1627.
Ground sloth
Ground sloth were a lot bigger than the existing ‘tree sloths’. These mammals lived in North and South America and they disappeared at around 3000 BC: scientists located the last ‘ground sloth’ in Cuba. They were very slow and some weighed up to 3,000 kilograms.