Mexican cave skeleton reveals secrets of New World's first people

[riky]

Mexican cave skeleton reveals secrets of New World's first people

<p><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/mexican-cave-skeleton-reveals-secrets-worlds-first-people-204419421.html"><img src="http://l3.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/J5m8GnOt9SK1DH3OL011bQ--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTg2O3E9NzU7dz0xMzA-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/Reuters/2014-05-15T204419Z_1_LYNXMPEA4E0Q5_RTROPTP_2_SCIENCE-SKELETON.JPG" width="130" height="86" alt="Handout of divers Nava and Bird transporting a skull to an underwater turntable for photographing in an underwater cave in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula" align="left" title="Handout of divers Nava and Bird transporting a skull to an underwater turntable for photographing in an underwater cave in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula" border="0" /></a>By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A horrible day for a teenage girl perhaps 13,000 years ago - death in a Mexican cave - has turned into a wonderful day for scientists who have managed to coax important secrets out of the oldest genetically intact human skeleton in the New World. Scientists said on Thursday genetic tests on her superbly preserved remains found by cave divers have answered questions about the origins of the Western Hemisphere's first people and their relationship to today's Native American populations. These findings determined that the Ice Age humans who first crossed into the Americas over a land bridge that formerly linked Siberia to Alaska did in fact give rise to modern Native American populations rather than hypothesized later entrants into the hemisphere. She may have ventured into dark passages of a cave to find freshwater and fallen to her death into what archeologist James Chatters of the firm of Applied Paleoscience, one of the leaders of the study, called an \&quot;inescapable trap\&quot; 100 feet (30 meters) deep - a bell-shaped pit dubbed Hoyo Negro, \&quot;black hole\&quot; in Spanish.</p><br clear="all"/>

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