Short-Necked Giraffes of Spain

The giraffe family is a classic example of a mammal 'family' that consists of very few living species. Giraffes are sufficiently distinctive, and, arguably, odd, that they clearly deserve a family of their own, yet there just aren't very many of them. Exactly how many living species there are in the family is currently the subject of a dispute, since there is good reason to suppose that the animal we actually know as "a giraffe" represents multiple species, but many researchers feel that the hard evidence for that supposition is lacking. What we can say is that, apart from the giraffes proper, there is only one other living species in the family - the okapi.

Fortunately, being large creatures, prehistoric giraffes tended to leave reasonably decent skeletons behind. They're distinctive in more ways than you might think, too, having, for example, a particularly odd canine tooth that ends in two or three (admittedly small) points, rather than just the one. So our knowledge of fossil giraffes is fairly good, and it turns out that there were a lot more species of them in the past than there are today - they were once a larger, and more widespread group.

Pleistocene (Pt 14): Ice Age Africa

Giant warthog

In the earlier parts of this series, when I described the animals of Ice Age Europe, I said that the continent, at that time, had a feel reminiscent of present-day Africa. But, if that's so, what was Africa like during the Ice Ages?

The answer is, perhaps disappointingly, "not that different to how it is now". Indeed, of all the settled continents, it's probably Africa that has changed the least since the Ice Ages. You might think that this has something to do with Africa being close to the equator; in particular, that it's too close for whopping great sheets of ice to have rolled across the countryside.

Which they didn't, so that much is true. Indeed, the southern hemisphere in general had far less ice cover than Europe, Asia, and North America. That's due mainly to the way that the continents happen to be arranged, with glacial ice sheets only being able to get as far as southern South America (there are fjords in places like Tierra del Fuego). Presumably, sea ice extended much further across the Southern Ocean than it does now, but that would have little effect on land-based animals.

But that's not to say that Africa, or Australia, were unaffected by the Ice Ages. Africa was colder than it is today, and, to begin with at least, rather drier, too. The Sahara and Kalahari deserts were more extensive than they are today, with the semi-desert belt of the Sahel being quite a way south of its present position, running through what are now fairly lush countries such as Guinea, Nigeria, and northern Kenya.