Cenozoic Animals

The Cenozoic, beginning 65 million years ago, spans the dinosaurs' fall to the rise of civilization, in seven epochs from the Paleocene to the recent Holocene; the Pleistocene brought the Ice Age and early humans. Mammals filled the empty niches, grazers replacing plant-eating dinosaurs, bears, cats and dogs becoming the hunters, whales and seals taking the seas, while birds won the skies. Adaptable, they reached mountains and polar wastes reptiles never managed.

It was also an age of giants: nearly every modern mammal family, from deer, swine and horses to apes, beavers and even dormice, had huge relatives. Most vanished abruptly after the last Ice Age, as mysteriously as the dinosaurs, though some lingered: moas until the late 1700s, the cave lion until about 100 B.C. These beasts suit prehistoric campaigns, time travel, or a remote corner of any world, and each gets a plain common name locals might use. Related creatures appear under Boar, Great Cats, Elephant, Hyena, Pleistocene Animal and Wolf.

Agriotherium (dog-headed bear): A huge, primitive, dog-faced bear just short of cave bear size, from the southern African plains. It claws twice and bites; a paw hit of 18 or better also hugs for 3-18. It fights 2-5 rounds between 0 and -10 hit points and dies instantly below that. Solitary, never hibernating in its warm range, and without enemies, it mostly eats plants and small animals, taking only sick or hurt big game.

Amphicyon (bear dog): A wolf-snouted, dog-tailed bear-shape that claws and bites but never hugs. A solitary, grizzly-like forager, it also ambushes titanotheres and hornless rhinos, and fears nothing.

Anancus (forest elephant): Small ears, a short trunk, and two straight 10-foot tusks worth 200-800 gp each. It gores with tusks and stamps with forelegs, but a single foe faces one tusk or both legs, never both. It browses temperate woods; disease and blight threaten adults, big predators the calves.

Andrewsarchus: The largest meat-eating land mammal known, a cat-tailed hyena shape with a 3-foot skull, kin to its prey rather than to true carnivores. It bites hard but prefers carrion, also tackling coryphodon, uintatherium, rhinos and tapirs. Solitary, it pairs yearly and has no enemies.

Bears note: swap the cave bear's and polar bear's statistics, since the cave bear was the largest ever. A Kodiak roughly equals a polar bear; black bear figures also cover tropical bears.

Giant camel: A humpless plains grazer taller than mastodons. Domesticated, it carries 800 lbs. at its top speed, or twice that at half pace. It bites or kicks with two hooves, never both in a round, and herds flee predators that come too near; only big hunters kill adults.

Dwarf elephant: A miniature elephant of wooded Mediterranean islands and Java, ancestor of the minimal elephants. It fights only with its tusks (10-100 gp each), and its herds flee men.

Eucladoceros (giant forest deer): Equal to a giant stag, but its sprawling, many-tined antlers deal 3-18.

Giant hippopotamus: Forerunner of the behemoth. Its tusks are smaller, dealing 5-20 (4-16 for cows). Its periscope eyes let it lurk wholly submerged, imposing -2 on surprise rolls for swimmers and boats. Groups are one bull and 1-3 cows; only calves fear the largest predators.

Marsupials: Pouched mammals once came in lion, bear, wolf, tapir and sabertooth shapes, plus 10-foot kangaroos and rhino-sized wombats, perfect for a strange Pleistocene island continent.

Megalania (giant plains lizard): A reptile like a vast monitor with long serrated teeth. Its bite doubles on a 20, and its tail strikes anyone behind it for 2-5, knocking them down unless they pass a 4d6 Dexterity check. It ambushes from grass and scrub, rests at night and midday, abandons its young, and fears nothing.

Metridiochoerus (giant warthog): Squat and long-headed, it slashes with two pairs of sharp tusks and fights on 1-3 rounds between 0 and -8 hit points. Females equal males. In a group the biggest is the male, the rest half females, half young. Lions take adults; many predators take young.

Pelorovis: A giant buffalo with half-circle horns spanning up to 12 feet. A charge of 40 feet or more deals 5-20, automatically knocks man-sized foes down, and tramples for 2-5. Herds roam woodland scrub; cows equal normal buffalo, and only lions kill bulls.

Sarkastodon: The greatest creodont, a long-tailed, bearlike hunter bigger than a cave bear. It claws and bites, hunts titanotheres but also eats roots and rodents, and has no natural foes.