About secondary world ecologies

Recently I read a book set in a world whose wildlife seemed
like it was drawn up using D&D's rural encounter tables (or worse,
Jorune [1]). More commonly, as someone pointed out in another
thread, fantasies use a mix of North American and European plants
and animals, because that is what the authors are used to.

	Even if we're going to limit ourselves to real world  
ecologies, there's more to pick from than North America and Europe.
Even if we stick to North America, the current situation is somewhat
depleted, There used to be animals like mastodons and sabre-
toothed cats in the fairly recent past. Going back a little farther,
we had carnivorous animals closely related to ungulates (Mesonychids),
rhinocerus-like browsers related to horses (Brontotherium),
giant vampire bats (Which unfortunately appears to be giant only
in comparison to vampire bats) and the "Bone Cru****ng Dogs", some
of which were as large as lions.

	Are there any fantasies that use exotic but real world 
species, extinct or otherwise?  

1: Or off one of those Polity worlds where every animal appears to have
become an apex predator.
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(For all your "The problem with
defending the English language [...]" T-****rt, cup and tote-bag needs)