ABOVE: Underwater speleologist Jerónimo Avilés dives inside the Chan Hol cave in Quintana Roo, Mexico.
EUGENIO ACEVEZ
Each year, more than 1 million people visit Xplor, a subaquatic theme park located a few kilometers south of Playa del Carmen, a popular tourist town on the Caribbean coast of southeast Mexico. Visitors swim in submerged caves, tear through the jungle in all-terrain vehicles, and zip line on hammocks—all of them likely oblivious to the human remains locked away in a laboratory on site and the scientists who are scrutinizing those remains for clues to the people and animals that lived in this very region around 10,000 years ago.
This field laboratory, associated with the Museo del Desierto in Coahuila, Mexico, is led by Jerónimo Avilés, an underwater speleologist and director of the Instituto de la Prehistoria de América AC. It’s the first place where items from underwater archaeological discoveries by his team ...
