More than 12,000 years ago, a young teenage girl walking through a deep cave (known today as Hoyo Negro) fell down a massive pit. The fall fractured her pelvis, and she died among the remains of giant ground sloths and saber-toothed cats who had met a similar fate. Over the next few millennia, the pit filled with water and their bones were covered with cave formations. They were left undisturbed until discovered in 2007 by cave divers, who named the girl “Naia” in a reference to Greek mythology.

Today, a team of archaeologists and geneticists announced the results from sequencing her mitochondrial genome. She possessed a haplogroup (D1) that evolved in Beringia and is seen in modern Native Americans.

So why is this result so important? The Hoyo Negro girl, like other Paleoindians (the oldest inhabitants of the Americas), had a skull shape that was distinctive from later (younger than 9,000 years before present) ancient Americans, who more closely resembled modern Native Americans. Continue reading →