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.