Cave-diving scientist Patricia A. Beddows of Northwestern University is a member of an international team of researchers and cave divers this week announcing the discovery in an underwater Yucatán Peninsula cave of one of the oldest human skeletons found in North America.
Now covered by water, the girl’s skeleton is between 13,000 and 12,000 years old and establishes a shared ancestry between the earliest Americans and modern Native Americans. Genetic analysis shows the prehistoric girl and living Native Americans came from the same place during the initial peopling of the Americas. The near-complete human skeleton — with an intact cranium and preserved DNA — was discovered lying 130 feet below sea level near a variety of extinct animals, including an elephant-like creature called a gomphothere. These remains helped scientists establish the age of the skeleton.
Details of “Naia,” a teenage girl who went underground to seek water and fell to her death in a large pit named Hoyo Negro (“black hole” in Spanish), will be published May 16 in the journal Science.
“The preservation of all the bones in this deep water-filled cave is amazing — the bones are beautifully laid out,” said Beddows, who has hovered underwater above the skeleton’s site and prospected in the area. “The girl’s skeleton is exceptionally complete because of the environment in which she died — she ended up in the right water and in a quiet place without any soil. Her pristine preservation enabled our team to extract enough DNA to determine her shared genetic code with modern Native Americans.”
SOURCE
http://sykose.com/2014/05/16/one-of-oldest-human-skeletons-in-north-america-is-discovered/
http://sykose.com/2014/05/16/one-of-oldest-human-skeletons-in-north-america-is-discovered/
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