> This is interesting, because you also stated that Pleistocene > deer were larger and fatter than modern deer. Deer, however, are > forest dwellers; they eat the bark of saplings and shoots. They > do not flourish in steppe-tundra conditions. Reindeer live on the tundra of the Arctic. The steppe-tundra was also a very wet lush land ( unlike my beloved Texas) with grasses and small shrubs. Steppe-tundra deer could not live in forests because their antlers were 12 feet in width. The steep-tundra environment no longer exists anywhere on Earth. It was full of Pleistocene megafauna such as mammoths, wooly rhinos, giant ground sloths, giant camels, etc. all of which began to become extinct beginning about 50,000 years ago to 4,000 years ago when the last mammoths died out on Wrangle Island. They existed in numbers that far exceeded animal populations seen anywhere on Earth today. Sixty percent of all large mammal species became extinct during this event. Knowing what we know about the steppe-tundra climate, it is reasonable to assume that they must have had huge fat stores to survive the deep snows of an ice-age winter. Ray Audette Author "NeanderThin" http://www.neanderthin.com