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
Manis Mastodon Site origin of the point. Gustafson also analyzed the position of the fossil, which was lying on its left side, while the heavily fragmented skull was rotated 180 degrees from its natural position. Noting that this could not have occurred due to natural causes Gustafson deduced that the carcass must have been tampered with by humans. Archaeologists were surprised to find a mastodon in the area at all because pollen samples that were taken showed no evidence of trees, which mastodons fed on. In an excavated layer above the mastodon, as well as that of a 6,700-year-old deposit of ash from