S8 Ep149: 1/8. The Deep History of North American Mammals and the Arrival of Human Predators — Dan Flores — Flores's book Wild New World examines North American fauna spanning 66 million years, detailing the evolutionary processes and intercontinental migration pat

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

News, Arts, Books, Society & Culture

4.5 • 2.8K Ratings

🗓️ 1 December 2025

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

1/8. The Deep History of North American Mammals and the Arrival of Human Predators — Dan Flores — Flores's book Wild New World examines North American fauna spanning 66 million years, detailing the evolutionary processes and intercontinental migration patterns that created the diverse Pliocene animal assemblage. Flores argues that Eurasian animals including deer and elk possessed significant adaptive advantages over indigenous species because they possessed millennia of evolutionary experience with humans functioning as apex predators. Flores emphasizes that humans emerged as a distinctive carnivorous mammalian species possessing unprecedented hunting capabilities, ultimately driving them across continents and oceans in search of prey.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is CBS Eye on the World.
0:08.6	Here's John Batchelor.
0:11.8	This is CBSI on the world.
0:14.1	I'm John Batchelor.
0:15.5	66 million years ago, North America,
0:18.8	all North America divided into three parts. Appalachia, the mid-continental
0:25.2	waterway, the interior waterway, and La Ramidia. This is the basis to begin a conversation about
0:34.3	wild new world, a new book from Dan Flores,
0:38.3	the A.B. Hammond Professor Emeritus of Western History
0:41.3	at the University of Montana.
0:43.3	And what Dan takes us is a time travel
0:46.3	from 66 million years ago, and the asteroid
0:51.3	that changed the direction of evolution to the period of time that we're living in now called
0:59.0	the Anthropocene, passing through a very important detail from 10,000 years ago called the Pleistocene.
1:07.0	This is the story of mammals chiefly, but also the story of one kind of mammal.
1:12.6	That's us, the Homo sapiens, the hominids who arrived twice, first from Eurasia, thousands of years ago,
1:20.6	and then second from Eurasia again within our memory, the so-called colonial Eurasians.
1:26.6	Dan, a very good evening to you. Thank you very much,
1:30.4	and it's a pleasure to speak to you because of the sweep of your story and also what I learn
1:35.9	is the philosophy of dealing with the wild animals of North America. We begin with the dinosaur exit
1:43.1	and the rebirth in the Paleocene period.
1:48.0	The mammals that we speak of often now today, we speak of the reduction of the buffalo, we speak of the wolf, we speak of the white-tailed deer.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from John Batchelor, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of John Batchelor and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.