your comment makes it seem like colonists reintroduced a native species (idk if that was the intention, but that’s how it reads), when in reality the horse species that were once native in South America was quite different from European Horses.
It also makes it seem like their extinction was due to human action (again, idk if that was the intention), but it also could’ve been due to climate change.
The key part from below is "Quaternary extinction event of most of the Pleistocene megafauna that is widely believed to have been a result of human hunting pressure."
>Fossil evidence indicates that mastodons probably disappeared from North America about 10,500 years ago as part of the Quaternary extinction event of most of the Pleistocene megafauna that is widely believed to have been a result of human hunting pressure. The latest Paleo-Indians entered the Americas and expanded to relatively large numbers 13,000 years ago, and their hunting may have caused a gradual attrition of the mastodon population.
The Mormon church believes Tapirs are what were being called 'horses' and what pulled chariots and such, as an apologetic way of covering the fact horses weren't on the continent, but Joseph Smith never knew that.
It also makes it seem like their extinction was due to human action (again, idk if that was the intention), but it also could’ve been due to climate change.