DNA From Ancient Child reveals new group of Native Americans: the ancient Beringians
An illustration of the Upward Sun River camp in what is now Interior Alaska. Illustration: Illustration by Eric S. Carlson in collaboration with Ben A. Potter Researchers have managed to sequence the genome of an ancient child that was descended from one of the original founding humans to have stepped foot in the Americas. A baby girl who lived and died in what is now Alaska at the end of the last ice age belonged to a previously unknown group of ancient Native Americans, according to DNA recovered from her bones. The child, a mere six weeks old when she died, was found in a burial pit next to the remains of a stillborn baby, perhaps a first cousin, during excavations of an 11,500-year-old residential camp in Tanana River Valley in Central Alaska. The remains were discovered in 2013, but a full genetic analysis has not been possible until now. Researchers tried to recover ancient DNA from both of the infants but succeeded only in the case of the larger individual. They had expected h