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Paleoecology is a discipline within paleontology that has grown enormously but still remains relatively new. The paleoecology of South American Pleistocene mammals has been a point of major debate since the mid-1990s. This debate focuses mainly on the discussion of the existence of an ecological imbalance between the energetic requirements of the carnivores and the amount of energy provided by the herbivores, and the possibility of using allometric models when studying fossil faunas. The aim of this work was to study the Pleistocene mammalian faunas as a whole and to contribute to such debate. A total of 107 Pleistocene faunas was selected and studied with four thermodynamically based trophic models. Two other faunas were included in the study, Serengeti (modern) and Santa Cruz (Miocene) because they would contribute to the discussion of the relevance of allometric models used in paleoecology …