SOLVING THE LACKING SOUTH AMERICAN MEGAFAUNAL EXPLOITATION: END GAME

​Many scientists have claimed that Megafaunal Kill/Scavenge sites (MKSs) are insufficient or lacking in South America (SA) in relation to North America (NA). Nevertheless, this argument has been insistently quizzed because MKSs could be neglected by researchers, extrapolating possible consistent explanations on New World megafaunal extinctions. Here, we solved the puzzle of this scientific statement supporting the paucity of information on megafaunal exploitation in South America. We gathered the MKS literature and quantified its citations by language (English vs. Latin languages – Spanish, Portuguese, and French) for both NA and SA. A total of 10,526 citations was found for all MKS papers over Americas, 5,678 for NA and 4,848 for SA. All NA literature was published in English, while SA presented publications in English and Latin languages (56% vs. 44%, respectively; Chi-squared test: X-squared = 718.01, df = 1, p-value < 2.2e-16, one-tail null hypothesis-H0: NA>SA). Our outcomes corroborate the Borrero's statement that, opposing to argued by scientists, SA is relatively well exploited, however, the literature written in Latin languages is lesser accessed than the literature in English. It demonstrates that language bias is not the greatest way to evolve the scientific debate. Hence, we think that more attention to Latin literature is hardly necessary to advance the American megafaunal exploitation knowledge [INCT-EECBio/CNPq/MCTIC].