Scpg02 wrote:
"The American prairies were formed by huge herds of buffalo grazing.'
Quite. Once the megafauna died out the bison took over. But it's recognised that the bison had changed as humans arrived. The long-horned bison had disappeared but had presumably evolved into modern American bison as a result of hunting pressure, landscape alteration and interbreeding with the incoming Asian bison. Its teeth adapted to more open grassland conditions and it formed larger herds. This is evidence in favour of my comments.
As further support I quote your next link:
"It must have been covered with vegetation even during the coldest part of the most recent ice age (some 24,000 years ago) because it supported large populations of woolly mammoth, horses, bison and other mammals during a time of extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation ... This vegetation was unlike that found in modern Arctic tundra".
As for the comment, "the nature of this vegetation has not been determined". My understanding is that it has been but for some reason the authors are not aware of the research.
The conclusion is that warmth-adapted vegetation could survive in much cooler regions at that time than it does today. The ice core evidence stands.
