Researchers Say Ancient Skeleton in Mexico Sheds Light on Americas Settlement Scott Neuman - NPR.org
go to original May 19, 2014

In this June 2013 photo provided by National Geographic, diver Susan Bird, working at the bottom of Hoyo Negro, a large dome-shaped underwater cave in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, brushes the Naia skull found at the site.

The nearly complete skeleton of a teenage girl who died some 12,000 to 13,000 years ago in a cave in the Yucatan Peninsula, has yielded DNA clues linking her to Native Americans living today.

The connection bolsters the prevailing theory that the sole route of human migration into North America took place over a Siberia-Alaska land bridge known as Beringia, starting 15,000 to 20,000 years ago.

NPR Science Correspondent Joe Palca says the skeleton of the girl, who died at age 15 to 16, was discovered in 2007 amid a complex of flooded caverns in Mexico known as Hoyo Negro, or "Black Hole."

Scientific American says, "She lies in a collapsed chamber together with the remains of 26 other large mammals, including a saber-toothed tiger, 600 meters from the nearest sinkhole. Most of the mammals became extinct around 13,000 years ago."

"It was impossible to safely recover the body from the cave location, so the research team dove to the cave and made bone measurements in situ. They placed Naia's skull on a rotating tripod, and set a camera on a second tripod next to it. Turning the skull slowly, they snapped pictures every 20 degrees. Later the team used the photographs to reconstruct a three-dimensional image."

James Chatters of Applied Paleoscience in Bothell, Wash., led the study and published the results in the journal Science.

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