The trace of a substantial assembly of massive E-S0 galaxies at
  0.8<z<1.5 in galaxy number counts
  K-band galaxy number counts (GNCs) exhibit a slope change at K~17.5 mag not
present in optical bands. To unveil the nature of this feature, we have derived
the contribution of different galaxy types to the total K-band GNCs at
0.3<z<1.5 by redshift bins and compared the results with expectations from
several galaxy evolutionary models. We show that the slope change is caused by
a sudden swap of the galaxy population that numerically dominates the total
GNCs (from quiescent E-S0's at K<17.5 mag to blue star-forming discs at fainter
magnitudes), and that it is associated with a flattening of the contribution of
the E-S0's at 0.6<z<1 to the total GNCs. We confirm previous studies showing
that models in which the bulk of massive E-S0's have evolved passively since
z>2 cannot predict the slope change, whereas those imposing a relatively late
assembly on them (z<1.5) can reproduce it. The K-band GNCs by redshift bins and
morphological types point to a progressively definitive build-up of ~50% of
this galaxy population at 0.8<z<1.5, which can be explained only through the
major mergers reported by observations. We conclude that the slope change in
total K-band GNCs is a vestige of the definitive assembly of a substantial
fraction of present-day massive E-S0's at 0.8<z<1.5.
