The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [77]
The goatlike species related to mouflon, chamois and ibex, divided their range by altitude, or by differences of terrain and landscape, with the wild goat-antelope, ibex, taking the highest ground with the steepest crags, followed at slightly lower elevations by the smaller and very nimble chamois, with the mouflon below them. But they were all found in rough terrain of even the lowest levels of the arid steppes, since they were adapted to cold, so long as it was dry.
Musk-oxen were also goatlike animals, although larger, and their heavy double coats, which resembled the fur of mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses, made them seem bigger and more “oxlike.” They nibbled continuously on the low shrubs and sedges, and they were particularly adapted to the coldest regions, preferring the extremely cold, windy, open plains close to the glacier. Though their underwool was shed in summer, musk-oxen became stressed if the weather turned too warm.
Giant deer and reindeer kept to open ground in herds, but most other deer were browsers of tree leaves. The solitary woodland moose were rare. They loved the summer leaves of deciduous trees, and the succulent pondweeds and water plants of marshes and lakes, and with broad hooves and long legs, they could negotiate marshy, boggy bottomlands. In winter they survived on the more indigestible grass, or high willow twigs of trees that grew on the low ground of river valleys, their splay-footed long legs easily carrying them through the windblown snow that drifted and piled up there.
Reindeer were winter-loving’ animals, feeding on lichens that grew on barren soil and rocks. They could smell the favored plants, even through snow, from a long distance, and their hooves were adapted to digging down through deep snows if they needed to. In summer they ate both grass and leafy shrubs.
Elk and reindeer both preferred alpine meadows or herbaceous highlands during spring and summer, but below the elevation of the ranging sheep, and the elk tended to eat grasses more than shrubs. Asses and onagers invariably preferred the arid higher hills, while bison ranged a bit lower, though they generally climbed higher than horses, which had a broader choice of terrain than mammoths or rhinoceroses.
Those primal plains with their complex and diverse grasslands sustained in great multitudes a fantastic mixture of animals. No single place on a later earth did more than approximate parts of it. The dry, cold environment of high mountains could not compare, though there were similarities. Mountain-dwelling sheep, goats, and antelopes extended their range to the lower ground then, but large herds of plains animals could not exist in the steep, rocky terrain of high mountains when the climate of the lowlands changed.
The soggy and fragile northern bogs were not the same. They were too wet for much grass to grow, and their stinting, acid soils caused plants to develop toxins to avoid being grazed by the great multitudes, which would destroy such delicate slow-growing flora. The varieties were limited and offered poor nutrients for the diversity of large herding animals; there was not sufficient feed. And only those with wide splaying hooves, like reindeer, could live there. Huge creatures of great weight with large stumpy legs, or fast runners with narrow dainty hooves became mired in the soft, wet land. They needed firm, dry, solid ground.
Later, the grassy plains of warmer, more temperate regions developed distinct bands of more limited vegetation controlled by temperature and climate. They offered too little diversity in summer, and too much snow in winter. Snow also bogged down animals that required firm ground, and it was difficult for many to push aside to reach food. Deer could live in woods where the snow was deep, but only because they browsed leaves and twig tips from trees that grew above the snow; reindeer could dig through snow to reach the lichen on which they fed in winter. Bison and aurochs subsisted, but they were reduced in size, no longer reaching their fall potential. Other animals,