The 14,200-Year-Old Human DNA Found In Ancient Feces — And The Oregon Cave Discovery That Challenged Clovis
Animal food evidence in the coprolites includes small rodent bones, fish scales and bones, and the occasional larger mammal hair or bone fragment.
This evidence is consistent with a broad-spectrum diet — the exploitation of a wide range of animal food sources rather than specialization in a single prey type — that is characteristic of effective hunter-gatherer subsistence in environments where any single prey type can be unreliable.
The combination of plant and animal evidence in the Paisley coprolites documents a human population that was not dependent on megafauna hunting alone.
The Pleistocene megafauna — mammoths, horses, and the other large animals of the late Pleistocene — appear to have been part of the subsistence landscape of the earliest Americans, and some early sites document unambiguous evidence of megafauna hunting or processing.