Bering Land Bridge National Preserve - Ice Age Wildlife Fun Facts (U.S. National Park Service)

A color drawing of a giant short faced bear, the legs are long and the body is leaner than modern grizzly bears, it has a huge head and short jaw.

An artist depiction of a giant short faced bear. They were twice the size of modern grizzly bears.

Alaska is an exciting place to live today with all of the different wildlife that lives here now. Imagine what it would have been like during the ice age with woolly mammoths, helmeted muskox, giant short faced bears, saber toothed tigers, and steppe bison roaming around Alaska!

GIANT SHORT FACED BEAR
For the giant short faced bear evolution was too slow. If they had been able to adapt and become more like other bears and prepare and learn to hibernate in the winter they might still be here today.

Bigger than a black bear, bigger than a grizzly bear, bigger than a polar bear, the giant short faced bear (GSFB) was a gigantic predator on the mammoth steppes of ice age Alaska. The GSFD was strictly a carnivore. They hunted and ate prey both large and small. The GSFB was different from grizzly bears today, it was taller, more muscular and did not put on fat for the winter, their heads were huge and they had short powerful jaws. They used their jaws not just to eat the flesh of their prey but also to crush the bones and eat those too.

Cool Fact: The giant short faced bear was a bear that was native to North America and lived here for almost one million years. The modern grizzly bear migrated over the land bridge from Asia to North America and has only been here about 60,000 years. Their time on earth would be like comparing a 100 year old grandmother to her 6 year old grandchild.

STEPPE BISON
There were more steppe bison on the mammoth steppes than any other ice age animal in Alaska. So why do they call it the Mammoth Steppe? Well we will talk about that in the Woolly Mammoth section.

Steppe bison migrated from Asia to North America and the number of fossils found in Alaska are what tell us that the steppe bison was the most common animals on the mammoth steppe. Steppe bison were not like the bison we have in the United States and Canada today. They did not have the huge heads and massive shoulder humps and they did not migrate over large areas like the bison of today. Instead, the steppe bison looked a little bit more like a big cow. They ate lots of different kinds of grasses so they did not have to migrate to find the same kind of grass all year, they could eat whatever new high quality grass was growing at that time of year.

Cool Fact: A steppe bison was found near Fairbanks, Alaska and it still had flesh on its bones, some of it still red. The hide (skin) was still on the animal and there were tears in the hide and flesh telling us this bison was attacked and probably killed by lions! Minerals from the soil the bison was found in stained the skin a dark blue so they bison was named Blue Babe.

A pencil drawing in brown of a shaggy coated woolly mammoth with long tusks.

A drawing of a woolly mammoth. The tusk could grow to be 12 feet long.

WOOLLY MAMMOTH
The woolly mammoth is probably the most famous of all the ice age wildlife. They are in books, museums, and even movies. Why are they so popular? Well because they are popular the mammoth steppe is named for them, the reason they are popular is because they can be so easy to find!

With huge bones and tusk that could get to be 12 feet long, mammoth bones are easy to find if you are looking in the right place. REMEMBER if YOU find a mammoth bone or any other historical or archaeological artifact you should leave it where it is and tell a park ranger, parent, teacher or police officer where it is. This way it can be preserved for everyone to see. Living in the cold north of Alaska during the ice age the woolly mammoth had had short hairy ears, a short hairy tail and a big tuft of fur on it head to help keep it warm. It also had a trunk that was split at the end to act like two fingers to help it get its food. We know all of this because archaeologist have found woolly mammoth mummies that still have their hair, skin and trunks.

Cool Fact: Even though the woolly mammoth only made up five percent of the ice age mammoth steppe population of animals, they make up about 30% of the total biomass found. That is like having 50 races horses and four elephants in a filed, the four elephants have more biomass or loosely we can say weight.