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alternative south america.....; when you thought south america couldnt be more crazy
Topic Started: Jun 19 2010, 07:17 PM (1,252 Views)
xaritscin
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this is the point:

imagine a world where panama never formed, and south america have been isolated until the modern era.
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Pando
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This wouldn't be such a special world. After all, South America was isolated until only 2 million years ago. What would be worth speculating would be the North Americans, with the absence of some large South Americans.
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The Dodo
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North America would be missing a few different species, not much difference to today.
South America on the the hand would probably still have terror birds s top predators in most areas, diverse marsupials and sparassodonts, and Xenarthrans.
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Pando
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But South America wouldn't be different than it was before. On the other hand North America got a lot of immigrants but the residents still survived, so it would be fun speculating what the residents would adapt to.
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ATEK Azul
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North America would be the most changed in natural fauna.

But as soon as Humans spread to South America things would change drasticly in my opinion as the Terror Birds would go the route of the Elephant Birds and the introduced species and habitat change associated with them and Human influences would cause lots of trouble especially from lack of demesticatable species and the large imported amounts of intruders that will create.
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The Dodo
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I don't think all of the terror birds would go extinct, some of the smaller species would survive the arrival of humans and some would survive in isolated areas.
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T.rex09
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Of course some terror birds would survive in isolated areas, but for the most part they would,as ATEK said, go the route of the elephant bird.
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Ook
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elephant bird was adapted to island,where lives oly few predators.Terror birds propably survives,becyuse they were adapted to place,where lives many other predators too.

North america will be propably same as today,with only few smaller animals missing.In pleistocene,there will be no groung sloths and glyptodonts,but that niche will be taken by probosceans(ground sloth ;) )

in south america there could evolve more proboscean like pyrotheriums..
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lamna
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I don't think terror birds would do very well alongside people, though some would probably make it.

Glyptodonts probably would not do too well unless they tasted awful. They would be pretty easy to catch.
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Ook
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how about domesticated sprassodonts and meridiungulates?
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SSJRaptog
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I could see some terror bird species survive and South America could have a wider marsupial diversity. I also think Glyptodonts, Macrauchenia and maybe toxodons would still be around in South America today.

And without llama's moving from North America to South America, we would have Macrauchenia in petting zoos instead of llama's XD
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xaritscin
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sometime i keep imagin how woult it be, people riding Thoatherium's descendants and breeding toxodons for food in large farms.
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irbaboon
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On another forum I suggested that in an isolated South America the herbivores might not do so poorly against the first humans to arrive because they were already used to being hunted by bipeds i.e. the terror birds. They would have already been fearful of things with two legs.
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Cephylus
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Now that is interesting..... :lol:

I guess terror birds would survive, although lots of them would be killed by human arrival and I think most of them would get smaller. South America would definately have more marsupials.
Toxodon would probably survive also.
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irbaboon
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Do you think any of them would prove suitable for domestication? If so what impact would this have on the Native Americans?
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