Pleistocene rewilding The mountain tapir is the only extant non-tropical species of tapir. Predators of mountain tapirs include cougars, bears, and, less commonly, jaguars. Good introduction areas might include forested ecosystems of the west and east coasts, and the more scrub-like or wetland ecosystem of the south. During the Pleistocene, large populations of Proboscideans lived in North America, such as the Columbian mammoth and the American mastodon. The mastodons all became extinct at the end of the Pleistocene era, as did the mammoths of North America. However, an extant relative of the mammoth is the Asian elephant. It now resides only in
Cerutti Mastodon site Cerutti Mastodon site The Cerutti Mastodon site is a paleontological and possible archeological site located in San Diego County, California. In 2017, researchers announced that broken mastodon bones at the site had been dated to around 130,700 years ago. Since the bones were found with cobblestones displaying use-wear and impact marks among the otherwise fine-grain sands, intentional breakage of the bones by hominins using the stones has been suggested by the researchers. If this is so, then some form of "Homo" may have been present in the Americas at an extremely early age. The Cerutti Mastodon site (SDNHM locality 3767)