ArticleScience advances2025
Extinct megafauna dominated human subsistence in southern South America before 11,600 years ago.
Article in Science advances, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Hemisphere-wide evidence of Early Paleoindian megaherbivore specialization.Science advances · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
One of the most widely cited objections to hypotheses that defend a central role for humans in late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions in South America has been the assumption that extinct megafauna was a marginal resource in early human economies. On the basis of accurate chronological frames and faunal quantitative data, we demonstrate that extinct megafauna were the principal prey item of early foragers from ~13,000 to 11,600 calibrated years before the present, and this fact had likely been obscured by lumping together pre- and postextinction archaeological faunal assemblages within a single chronological window. We also show that the most exploited extinct taxa were at the apex of the ranking of the prey choice model. After the diversity and abundance of megafauna had already declined severely (~12,500 B.P.), and especially after they had virtually disappeared (~11,600 B.P.), the human diet was broadened. This strongly reinforces the idea that humans must be central to the debate on Quaternary extinctions in South America.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.