Megafauna — the enormous animals of the Pleistocene, like mammoths and mastodons and giant ground sloths — had been extinct for several thousand years by the time of the Windover burials.

The Florida landscape of 8,000 years ago was populated by deer, bear, panther, alligator, the full range of wading birds and waterfowl, freshwater fish, and a rich diversity of smaller mammals and reptiles.

The water bodies of the interior — the ponds and lakes and rivers — were productive environments for fish, turtle, and aquatic birds.

The Windover community appears to have been making full use of this ecological diversity.

The fish bones in the peat matrix, the evidence of plant food consumption in the gut contents of some individuals, the stature and nutritional status indicated by the skeletal record — all of these point to a community that was adequately fed from the resources of its environment.