With the first snow of winter comes a shift in attention. While dinosaurs are a popular topic for most of the year, it was during winter that thoughts turn to the Ice Age. Though as science expands its understanding, more details have become clear. For starters, the Ice Age of the Pleistocene Era wasn't the only ice age Earth has experienced. It may have been the latest of five other ice ages. Of course, it's hard to cover all of the details and so people tend to generalize.
For instance, Danya didn't completely match most people's mental image of a dire wolf. Oh, she was definitely a very big wolf, but popular culture has painted the dire wolf as being gigantic. In truth, their average size was about the same as the largest grey wolf. But Danya was still satisfied with how big she had gotten. Her main discontent was that she was the only dire wolf Animalian and it wasn't quite closely related enough to grey wolves to breed with. But there will surely be other people who will want to be dire wolves, especially since Animalia has reopened talks about creating a colony for Ice Age Animalians in northern Canada.
As such, Danya was looking to get in contact with some of her fellow Cenozoic Animalians. Fortunately, she found three of them working out in Claw Coliseum. They were Manfred the woolly mammoth, Diego the sabertooth cat, and Wanda the woolly rhino. Compared to them, Danya was a little smaller, but at least she wasn't completely dwarfed.
Soon after introductions, the discussion soon turned to potential new species for Project Pleistocene. "I hear they're going to be resurrecting the American lion," said Diego, "Which happens to be one of the biggest cats of all time."
"Would it have a mane or is it more like a mountain lion?" asked Danya.
"I'm not sure," said Diego, "It might have been more closely related to the jaguar."
"Well, if we're having cave lions, will we have cave bears?" asked Danya.
"Maybe," said Diego, "There are plenty of guys with fascinations with bears."
"Well, we're probably going to have mastodons at some point," said Manfred.
"Isn't that another term for mammoth?" asked Wanda.
"They're very distinct species," said Manfred, "Mastodons were built more like modern elephants than mammoths."
"Well, I'd like there to be more species of rhino," said Wanda.
"You mean like Megacerops" asked Manfred.
"Actually, Megacerops and the other brontotheres were more closely related to horses," said Wanda, "If they wanted an actual extinct rhino species, they'd get a Paraceratherium." The other three gave her a blank look. "I guess that name isn't quite as well known," said Wanda, "Maybe you've heard of Baluchitherium?"
"Wait, isn't that the hornless rhino that's built like a cross between an elephant and a giraffe?" asked Danya.
"That's the one," said Wanda.
"But how can they get an Animalian that gigantic?" asked Manfred, "It was over 17 feet tall."
"Well, you aren't really bigger than an African elephant, are you?" asked Wanda.
Manfred thought about it a moment before saying, "Touche."
"Well, if they can make sauropod Dinotopians that can fit inside houses, I don't see why a Baluchitherium can't be moderately small as well," said Diego.
"Probably would be as hard for whoever becomes that unless they get Dinotopian-sized stuff," said Danya. Sure, the prevalent idea is that 'bigger is better', but it can be an inconvenience in several ways. Danya was quite glad she only got as big as she did.