Apr. 23, 2012 When it comes to adapting to climate change,
diversity is the mammal's best defense. That is one of the
conclusions of the first study of how mammals in North America
adapted to climate change in "deep time" -- a period of 56
million years beginning with the Eocene and ending 12,000 years
ago with the terminal Pleistocene extinction when mammoths,
saber-toothed tigers, giant sloths and most of the other
"megafauna" on the continent disappeared. "Before we can predict
how mammals will respond to climate change in the future, we
need to understand how they responded to climate change in the
past," said Larisa R. G. DeSantis, the assistant professor of
earth and environmental studies at Vanderbilt who directed the
study. "It is particularly important to establish a baseline
that shows how they adapted before humans came on the scene to
complicate the picture." Establishing such a baseline is
particularly important for mammals because their ability to
adapt to environmental changes makes it difficul