We may have to know about the past so we won't repeat it, but we also need this knowledge to broaden our viewpoint. The perspective of today gives only a keyhole glimpse of reality. We take it for granted, for example, that elephants and lions and tapirs and all sorts of other creatures are limited to tropical climes. Yet, the past tells us that the elephants that we call mammoths roamed throughout the arctic and temperate zones, lions occurred in the New World from northern North American to South America and tapirs ranged well into the United States.
This was not in some distant geological age, millions of years ago, but
practically yesterday. What is now Chihuahuan Desert supported mammoths to about 11,000
years ago, overlapping the presence of man. Sharing that landscape were lions--lions
that today we call African, but once roamed through much of the Old and the New worlds.
Tapirs, perhaps in our desert limited to waterways, vanished only late in the last ice
age. A knowledge of the past can open that key-holed door.
Contributor: Arthur H. Harris, Laboratory for Environmental Biology, Centennial Museum, University of Texas at El Paso.
Desert Diary is a joint production of the Centennial Museum and KTEP National Public Radio at the University of Texas at El Paso.
An African lioness, presumably similar to the American Lion except for somewhat smaller size.
Kurtén, B., and E. Anderson. 1980. Pleistocene mammals of North America. Columbia University Press, New York. 442 pp.
Desert Diary Lion page.