ABOVE: An archaeological site in Siberia where researchers located two 31,000-year-old milk teeth
ELENA PAVLOVA, NATURE
Sequencing the genomes of 34 individuals hailing from Siberia, Alaska, and the land bridge that connected the two between 600 and more than 31,000 years ago, University of Copenhagen geneticist Eske Willerslev and colleagues identified a woman hailing from northeastern Siberia about 10,000 years ago who shares about two-thirds of her genome with the modern Native American population, according to a study published yesterday (June 5) in Nature.
“It’s the closest we have ever gotten to a Native American ancestor outside the Americas,” Willerslev tells Science.
The woman, called Kolyma1, is not part of the group that founded the Native American population; that migration happened much earlier. According to the analysis, Native Americans’ ancestors likely split from Kolyma1’s group about 24,000 years ago, aligning with previous work on when the initial migrations to North America ...
