The new study, conducted by researchers at Aarhus University in Denmark, has concluded that the reason Africa is the only place left where large mammal diversity has remained high throughout our history is not because the environment there is particularly favorable, but because they survived the onslaught of human hunting. They then produced a projection of what the mammal diversity would look like in the rest of the world without us. Notably, the diversity in the Americas is much greater than anything like what we see today. [...]
The researchers constructed the new world map by predicting the distribution of now-extinct animals based on their ecology, biogeography, and the current natural environmental condition. Their creation provided the first estimate of how mammal diversity would have looked without modern man’s influence. They found that the diversity in the Americas should be much greater, with grasslands not unlike the Serengeti in Africa supporting giant sloths, herds of horses and mastodons, all being preyed upon by short-faced bears and saber-toothed cats. [...]
The study does, however, presume that the changing climate at the end of the Pleistocene was not sufficient to kill the large mammals off on its own and that it was man’s influence that delivered the death blow. This area of research is hotly debated and contested, with arguments flying back and forth as to the real reason the world’s large mammals died out. It's generally thought likely to be a combination of climate change and hunting, but it’s impossible to say whether or not all species of mammal would have been able to adapt sufficiently to a changing environment and survive to present.
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