(Leonora (Ellie) Enking / Flickr)

Imagine stepping outside your front door and coming face-to-face with a giant saber-toothed cat or driving to work and having to dodge a huge mammoth blocking traffic on way.

It wasn’t that long ago that giant cats, mammoths, huge bears - even a lumbering two-ton ground sloth called Idaho home. Those animals are gone now, but they had an impact on our ecosystem that lasts today. And studying them could give us clues about how our present day ecosystem works.

Dr. Eric Yensen, Professor Emeritus of Biology at the College of Idaho, joined Idaho Matters to tell us more.