Elephants with fur coats

If you could have been in North America or Europe twenty thousand years
ago, you’d have thought you were at the North Pole! Much of the land was
covered with a mountain of ice and snow.

Many animals that lived then were just like the animals that live in
cold places today. There were bears, elk, and packs of wolves. There
were also animals that looked like huge elephants, but they were covered
with thick, shaggy fur. These animals are called mammoths, a word that
means very big.

Mammoths and dinosaurs and many other animals of long ago are all gone.
As many years passed, some of those animals died off and others changed.
And animals are still changing. In a million years the world will be as
different as it was a million years ago. Many of today’s animals will be
gone. There may be many new kinds of animals. The story of life on earth
is a story that is always changing.