Extinct Mammals / Ice Age DLC

[avietar]

I don't care for dinosaurs in a zoo, but I would love an extinct mammal DLC.

Having extinct mammals in a zoo isn't even a farfetched idea. There are programs in the works that, for example, seek to bring animals like woolly mammoths back to life by using the Asian elephant genome as a blueprint. Extinct mammals in a zoo might seem impossible now, but it might be part of a normal trip to the zoo for our grandchildren.

In any case, the animal list of an Extinct Mammal / Ice Age DLC could include:

• Woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius ) - The icon of the ice age. Officially went extinct about 10.000 years ago, but strains of these animals might have still been alive 4000 years ago!
• American mastodon (Mammuthus americanum ) - The well known short haired American mammoth.
• Woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis ) - Another iconic ice age mammal.
• Sabre-toothed cat (Smilodon populator) - The largest and most famous of the sabre-toothed cats, went extinct some 7000 years ago.
• American cheetah (Miracinonyx inexpectatus) - Not actually related to the cheetah but rather to modern day cougars. It was an athletic cat built for speed that lived in North America.
• Short faced bear (Arctodus simus ) - A huge bear sized animal that was an opportunistic feeder and probably intimidated other predators to give up their prey.
• Dire wolf (Canis dirus) - A huge wolf that often got into fights with sabre-toothed cats (it's awesome what skeletons can tell us about these extinct animals' lives).
• Irish elk (Megaloceros giganteus) - Enormous deer that kind of looked like European red deer, sporting giant antlers that grew outwards. Despite what the name would have you believe, it lived in many parts of the world.
• Bush-antlered deer (Eucladoceros dicranios) - A tall deer with enormous antlers with many tines.
• Hippidion (Hippidion saldiasi ) - A 140 cm tall (at the shoulder) South American horse that went extinct some 9000 years ago.

These are just some examples of cool extinct mammals I'd like to see. These are some iconic animals and I think they'd make a great addition to the game. Their designs aren't very out there, so I think they'd be doable for the developers to create. These animals also lived around the same time period and some of them shared the same habitat, so you could make shared exhibits. For instance, an exhibit featuring both woolly mammoths and woolly rhinos, or irish elk and bush-antlered deer. (or all four together)

So, who else is feeling this DLC?

Are there other extinct mammals you are interested in? You can post them below, and add some info on why they should be in this DLC.

 

[Mjmannella]

A lot of these are a bit samey for my tastes. I don't think both Irish elk and bush-antlered deer are needed, same with mammoths and mastodons (also, mastodons are cousins of elephants entirely, and aren't mammoths).

I've made my own extinct DLC concept if you're interested.

 

[avietar]

Thanks for linking, I hadn't seen your thread yet and I like your ideas.

The animals I mentioned above are just a small selection of animals that I would like to see, as I love these particular animals. These animals wouldn't comprise the entire animal selection of such a DLC I'd be more than happy to see them added to your selection of animals.

I won't pretend to be an expert of mammoths and mastodons, but they are both of the genus Mammuthus and so both are cousins of modern day African elephants (genus loxodonta) and Asian elephants (genus elephas), and so mastodons and mammoths are more closely related to each other than they are to modern day elephants.

 

[Mjmannella]

This is getting off-tangent, but mastodons are the genus Mammut, while mammoths are are the genus Mammuthus. But I don't blame you for mixing the two up when there's only a three-letter difference between the genera names.

 

[avietar]

This is getting off-tangent, but mastodons are the genus Mammut, while mammoths are are the genus Mammuthus. But I don't blame you for mixing the two up when there's only a three-letter difference between the genera names.

Ah, my bad then! I read M. americanus and M. primigenius and assumed they were both Mammuthus.

 

[Barje]

Uhh,i have very mixed thoughts about ice age Animals,just like huge ocean Animals,i love them,but i don't think they would fit to the game,also i dont know how those research gonna work,but i'm nearly sure that releasing animal extinct few thousands years ago into nowadays ecosystem may ruin it.But for zoos? who knows?

 

[LN]

No thanks from me.

 

[Mjmannella]

Uhh,i have very mixed thoughts about ice age Animals,just like huge ocean Animals,i love them,but i don't think they would fit to the game,also i dont know how those research gonna work,but i'm nearly sure that releasing animal extinct few thousands years ago into nowadays ecosystem may ruin it.But for zoos? who knows?

It could be argued that species going extinct has actually left today's ecosystems damaged. And especially in steppe tundras, woolly mammoths were keystone species that potentially helped deal with permafrost. If anything, resotre creatures that went extinct in the Holocene would be an environmental benefit.

 

[Barje]

Oh,i didnt know about this interaction,but we still need to wait(propably much much time) to see this project in life

 

[Holyvision]

I would rather see a LOT of DLC that isn't around extinct animals first. The game is about conservation and breeding and selling extinct animals feels like it's something that belongs in the sadly-failure of a game Jurassic World Evolution.

There's is soooo much they can add before getting into this kinda stuff. I think some PROPS for extinct animals (a mammoth statue or something) make sense but not having the animals themselves.

 

[Mjmannella]

I would rather see a LOT of DLC that isn't around extinct animals first. The game is about conservation and breeding and selling extinct animals feels like it's something that belongs in the sadly-failure of a game Jurassic World Evolution.

There's is soooo much they can add before getting into this kinda stuff. I think some PROPS for extinct animals (a mammoth statue or something) make sense but not having the animals themselves.

There's a huge difference between what went extinct in the Holocene and what went extinct in the Mesozoic. These shouldn't be treated as the same. Woolly mammoths actually lived with today's animals, unlike the dinosaurs of tens of millions of years ago. They ought to be in the game alongside animals they actually lived with.

 

[avietar]

There's a huge difference between what went extinct in the Holocene and what went extinct in the Mesozoic. These shouldn't be treated as the same. Woolly mammoths actually lived with today's animals, unlike the dinosaurs of tens of millions of years ago. They ought to be in the game alongside animals they actually lived with.

Exactly, these animals are normal mammals that by the by, people also lived and interacted with only a few thousand years ago. This is evidenced in weapons that were made out of these animals' bones, carcasses that were clearly butchered by people, and of course paintings of these animals that people left in caves such as the famous Lascaux cave in France.

(And yes, part of the reason that at least one organization wishes to breed and release mammoths back into the tundra of northern Eurasia is because of their positive effect on the ecosystem)

 

[JoeD915]

It would be interesting to see these animals in the game, but I have a feeling we probably won’t get anything prehistoric, due to Prehistoric Kingdom currently being worked on.

 

[Mjmannella]

It would be interesting to see these animals in the game, but I have a feeling we probably won’t get anything prehistoric, due to Prehistoric Kingdom currently being worked on.

Prehistoric Kingdom isn't a total competitor, since they're only incorporating prehistoric animals. Plus, having just extinct Holocene animals would still give it a niche.

 

[Baryonix82]

I think that more than for a DLC, the issue of extinct mammals would give for a complete game idea.
Frontier has developed a game with current animals, dinosaurs and I would make another game with the appearance of mammals. The idea I have for the game would be based on the Cenozoic Era (which has 3 periods: the Paleogenic Period, the Neogenic Period and the Quaternary Period)