Wild New World

From the icy Arctic wastes of Alaska to the tropical swamps of Florida, North America is home to an amazingly rich diversity of wildlife. Yet when humans first entered the continent at the end of the last Ice Age 13,000 years ago, they would have encountered many more fascinating and bizarre creatures, such as ground sloths and glyptodonts, mastodons and mammoths. When you add to this list camels and horses, sabre and scimitar-toothed cats, dire wolves, lions and cheetahs, it is no wonder that Ice-Age North America has been described as an American Serengeti, teeming with a variety of large mammals that rivals the East African plains of today. Wild New World takes us on a captivating journey back in time to follow in the footsteps of those first Americans. Moving across this vast continent region by region, present-day animals are studied for insights into older, now extinct beasts. A wealth of fossil evidence on the continent's prehistoric wildlife has provided intriguing clues to the past, and with modern computer techniques it is now possible to flesh out those bones, put fur on them and bring them back to life. A series of stunning computer-generated panoramas creates a vivid picture of what this ancient landscape was like, which animals were present and how they lived and died.