megafauna

It had evolved to specialize in hunting megafauna — oversized, cold-tolerant, plant-eating mammals like mammoths and giant sloths and saber-toothed tigers.

While the more flexible grey wolf is still around today, its large, dire cousin died out some 12,900 years ago, probably as a result of mass extinctions of the megafauna to which it was so well adapted.

"������'s striking to me is that this confirms a lot of data from other sites. For example, the animal parts left at Clovis sites are dominated by megafauna, and the projectile points are large, affixed to darts, which were efficient distance weapons," said co-lead author Ben Potter, an archaeology professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

"If the climate is changing in a way that reduces the suitable habitat for some of these megafauna, then it makes them potentially more susceptible to human predation. These people were very effective hunters," said Potter.

"You had the combination of a highly sophisticated hunting culture -- with skills honed over 10,000 years in Eurasia -- meeting naïve populations of megafauna under environmental stress," said Chatters.