dietary patterns away from predominantly mixed feeders to more specialized feeders. This dietary evolution may have been one of the factors that contributed to the disappearance of South American gomphotheres at the end of the Pleistocene. Climatic change and human predation have also been discussed as possible causes of extinction. Associations with early human sites Gomphothere remains are common at South American Paleo-Indian sites. Examples include the early human settlement at Monte Verde, Chile, dating to around 14,000 years ago, and the Altiplano Cundiboyacense (Tibitó, 11,740 years ago), and the Valle del Magdalena of Colombia. In 2011, remains dating between 10,600 and 11,600 years ago were also found in the El Fin del Mundo (End of the World) site in Sonora, Mexico's Clovis location – the first time such an association was found in a northern part of the continent where gomphotheres had been thought to have gone extinct 30,000 years ago. As announced in July 2014, the "position and proximity of Clovis weapon fragments relative to the gomphothere bones at the site suggest that humans did in fact kill the two animals there. Of the seven Clovis points found at the site, four were in place among the bones, including one with bone and teeth fragments above and below. The other three points had clearly eroded away from the bone bed and were found scattered nearby." Gallery References External links (article about a fossil exhibit at the Sierra College Natural History Museum) (photos from the excavation of a Gomphothere skeleton on the Sierra College website) Miocene proboscideans Pliocene proboscideans Serravallian first appearances Holocene extinctions Pleistocene proboscideans Taxa named by Ángel Cabrera de:Gomphotherium