Series / Wild New World

Wild New World (also known as Prehistoric America) is a six-part BBC documentary from 2002 that focuses on the wildlife of ice age North America 13,000 years ago, with each episode centering on the fauna of a particular part of the continent that wasn’t covered in ice sheets, from the frigid tundra of Alaska (then part of Beringia) to the tropics of Florida. The series is known for its transitions, which show the present-day melting away to become the past and prehistoric animals walking through modern cities.

While some beasts such as mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed cats, and ground sloths are brought to life via CGI, many others are played by live-action actors, often by mixing and matching footage of African animals with that of American ones. Besides the megafauna, the series also highlights other aspects of Pleistocene America, such as differences in climate and flora, the lowering of sea levels, natural disasters like the Missoula floods, and of course, the arrival of the first Native Americans.

Some of the CGI models for this show get repurposed in Monsters We Met, and it also has a spin-off special called Ice Age Death Trap, which focuses on the famous La Brea Tar Pits and mostly repurposes footage from the original series.

Tropes used in Wild New World:

• Armor Is Useless: Glyptotherium is heavily armored but the jaguar still manages to kill it by biting through its skull. ^note  Jaguar jaws are strong enough to bite through turtle shells and the armored hide of crocodiles.
• The Artifact: Several examples of "evolutionary anachronisms" are shown in the series, relics from Pleistocene ecosystems that no longer exist. For example, the pronghorns' incredible speed might have evolved to help them evade the American cheetah (Miracinonyx trumani), but after the cheetah’s extinction, the pronghorn’s capacity to run at over 80 km/h became redundant, as it far exceeds the speed of extant sympatric predators like wolves, cougars, and coyotes. Likewise, the osage orange, now restricted to parts of Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas, used to be far more widespread during the ice ages, with megafauna such mammoths browsing its trees and helping disperse its seeds via their feces. ^note  Though this is a controversial hypothesis among researchers.
• Based on a True Story: The series highlights many real-life fossil finds from ice age America, incorporating some of them into the short stories at the end of an episode.
  • “Land of the Mammoth” features “Blue Babe”, a mummified specimen of a steppe bison, and deduces that it was killed by a predator and which one (cave lions). The episode then bookends with two lions killing a bison, whose partially-consumed corpse is then left to be frozen solid and preserved for 13,000 years.
  • “Edge of the Ice” focuses heavily on a mastodon specimen found on the Olympic Peninsula, which had a spear-head embedded in its shoulder (showing that it encountered humans) but its injury healed, meaning it escaped the hunters, though cut marks imply that it was later found and butchered by humans. The story at the end centers on its death (due to old age) and how it was subsequently scavenged by a scimitar cat and humans.
  • “American Serengeti” highlights thee:
    • The first is the Natural Trap Cave, a famous fossil site in Wyoming where countless ice age animals fell down a 85-foot cavern, including short-faced bears. The story at the end shows a bison falling to its death during a stampede and subsequently, the short-faced bear that has been searching for a meal jumps down after the carcass, surviving the fall but trapping itself in the process.
    • Benny and Gerorge famous fossils of two bull Columbian mammoths who died with their tusks locked together in Nebraska
    • Finally there is the Hot Springs mammoth site, where many individuals (namely young males) got trapped in a slippery spring-fed pond while trying to drink.
  • “Ice Age Oasis” ends with a jaguar killing a Glyptotherium by biting through its skull, which is based on a specimen with twin holes punctured into its skull. ^note  Though said specimen was a juvenile, came from Arizona and not Florida, and the killer is thought to have been a saber-toothed cat.
• Bears Are Bad News:
  • The giant short-faced bear (Arctodus simus), one of the largest mammalian land carnivores ever, appears in two episodes. In Ice Age Death Trap, it's shown confronting a Smilodon over a dead mammoth and easily kills the cat.
  • “Edge of the Ice” shows a Clovis man venturing into a cave and getting mauled to death by a grizzly bear. He actually goes further into the cave after hearing the bear roaring.
• Flooded Future World: Another recurring theme in the series is how we are living in such a world today, since 13,000 years ago, the great ice sheets locked up so much of Earth’s water that sea levels dropped dramatically, exposing vast expanses of land that are now submerged. Back then, Siberia and Alaska were joined together, forming Beringia, which is how many Old World species such as woolly mammoths, cave lions, saiga antelope, and eventually humans reached North America, and how native wildlife such as horses and camels traveled into the Old World, while further south, Florida doubled in size, which is why we find animal fossils and fossilized tree stumps in coastal waters.
• The Great Flood: Part of “Edge of the Ice” discusses the famous Missoula floods, caused by ice dams breaking and the glacial waters flooding the landscape, and how it meant certain death for all animals unfortunate enough to be living in the north-west when said floods happened.
• Honorable Elephant: Much like extant elephants, the mammoths and mastodons are shown as highly intelligent and social animals. “Edge of the Ice” shows an elderly bull dying near a lake and younger bulls gather around him during his final moments, scaring off the hungry Homotherium and allowing the elder to die in peace.
• Layman's Terms: The narration entirely avoids referring to any of the featured animals by their scientific names (even the famous Smilodon is simply called "saber-toothed cat"), which makes identifying some of the more obscure fossil species difficult. The closest thing to an aversion is the Glyptotherium being called a glyptodont, as it has no common name.
• Mammoths Mean Ice Age: Unsurprisingly, mammoths are a major focus in this series, with “Land of the Mammoth” featuring the iconic woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) and “Canyonlands” and “American Serengeti” featuring the larger but less hairy Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi), who is also very much the series’ mascot. The mammoths' distant cousin, the mastodon (Mammut americanum) is also prominently featured, appearing in “Ice Age Oasis” and being the main elephant in “Edge of the Ice”, the latter of which also features the two mammoth species in smaller roles.
• Mighty Glacier: The ground sloth Eremotherium is slow-moving but it's also as big as a mastodon (we see them side by side for comparison) and is armed with formidable claws, so it's safe from even the fiercest predators, like the sabretooth. The same is true for its fellow giant xenarthran, the heavily armored Glyptotherium (though a jaguar still manages to kill it).
• Misplaced Wildlife:
  • A major theme throughout the series is how Pleistocene America housed many animals that would nowadays seem very out of place; such as camels, llamas, lions, cheetahs, saiga antelopes, tapirs, zebra-like horses, and so on. The penultimate episode highlights it the most and is appropriately titled “American Serengeti”. Ironically, quite a few of those species, such as horses, camelids, tapirs, and jaguars actually evolved in North America.
  • This is a plot point in “Edge of the Ice”, which shows migrating mastodon traveling through the tundra in Pleistocene Washington, despite being forest-dwelling specialized browsers and ill-equipped to feed on grasses on the open plains (unlike mammoths).
• Mix-and-Match Critters:
  • The Glyptotherium resembles a cross between an armadillo (its closest relative) and an ankylosaur.
  • The scimitar cat Homotherium resembles a cross between a typical big cat and a spotted hyena, complete with a sloping back, long legs, and hyena-like colorations. Unsurprising, since Homotherium evolved to be a plain-dwelling pursuit predator much like spotted hyenas (with whom it competed in Pleistocene Eurasia).
• Only in Florida: Most of the featured megafauna either resemble extant animals or are familiar enough (hairy elephants, big cats with saber teeth, long-legged bears), but “Ice Age Oasis”, which is set in Florida, features some of the most outlandish animals that inhabited ice age America; the 20-foot ground sloth Eremotherium, who stood as tall as a giraffe on two legs, and the alien-looking Glyptotherium, a massive armadillo-like beast with a solid shell and an armored tail used for defense. Of course, both giants are immigrants from South America, which is why they stuck to the tropics of Florida.
• Out of Focus:
  • While the series has a strong focus on the big cats that used to roam ice age America, the American cheetah is given the least attention, only appearing for one scene in “American Serengeti” where it's shown chasing pronghorns (all done via stock footage) and it doesn’t even get a cameo during the short story at the end. The same episode also features Natural Trap Cave but never brings up how Miracinonyx is one of the most common finds there.
  • In an odd subversion of expectations, the saber-toothed cat (Smilodon fatalis) is given fairly little focus in “Ice Age Oasis”, with its only significant scene involving it getting sprayed by a skunk, and the episode never cites any specific find from Florida to warrant its inclusion (possibly because fossils of this species aren’t that common in Florida).
• Overshadowed by Awesome:
  • Weighing up to a ton and standing over 6 feet tall, the American bison is the largest land mammal on the continent today, but it was tiny compared to the 10-ton Columbian mammoth it once shared the plains with.
  • The grizzly bear is the largest carnivore in continental North America today, but the giant short-faced bear was easily twice as big, being one of the largest carnivorous land mammals period.
  • The cougar is one of the most formidable predators in North America today, but it was fairly low in the big cat hierarchy 13,000 years ago, when it coexisted with jaguars, scimitar cats, sabretooths, and the gigantic American lion (one of the largest known felids).
• Palette Swap: The bear-sized Nothrotheriops and gigantic Eremotherium are the exact same model, just slightly different shades of brown. The footage showing them gets repurposed in Ice Age Death Trap for Harlan's ground sloth (Paramylodon).
• Panthera Awesome: Smilodon, Homotherium, Miracinonyx, cave lions, American lions, and the ice age jaguar (Panthera onca augusta) all appear in this series, the last of which kills a glyptodont by biting through its skull! There's also the still-living cougar, who was Overshadowed by Awesome back then.
• Real Is Brown: Most of the CGI animals have plain-looking brown or gray uniform colorations. The one exception is the scimitar cat, which has silver-gray fur, and is covered in dark spots like a cheetah.
• Smelly Skunk: One drives off a saber-toothed cat using its signature weapon.
• Snowy Sabertooths: Averted with Smilodon fatalis, who shows up in “Canyonlands” (set in the Grand Canyon) and “Ice Age Oasis” (set in Florida), while its tundra-dwelling cousin, the scimitar cat (Homotherium serum) shows up in “Edge of the Ice” (set in Washington, then at the edge of the Laurentide Ice Sheet).
• Those Two Guys: The short-faced bear and ice age lions have two appearances each, and both times they appear in the same episode, and inevitably square off against one another.