Carissa Wong is a person.
There is a side view of a skull.
An ancient skull found in south-west China shows that the individual was a member of our species, Homo sapiens, and had genetic ties to the ancestors of Native Americans.
In 1989 the skull of a person known as Mengzi Ren was found in Red Deer Cave. It has been debated if the skull was a member of our species or an archaic human.
Bing Su and his colleagues at the Institute of Zoology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences were able to determine that the specimen was female by analyzing ancient DNA. The team was able to establish the individual's species-level identity by taking just a small amount of the genome.
Su said it was an exciting moment. It's hard to find ancient DNA in such a sample. We were able to sequence ancient DNA after three years of trying to extract it.
The team found genetic similarities between the individual and living people of East Asian ancestry, as well as Native American people. Native American ancestry can be traced back to ancient populations in East Asia.
The East Asian ancestry of Native Americans has been inferred through the analysis of their genes.
This is the first time we've been able to confirm the East Asian ancestry of Native Americans with the help of an ancient East Asian genome.
Some of the ancestors of Native Americans may have traveled north along the coastline of eastern China, as well as through the Japanese islands, before crossing into America.
The settlement of East Asia is linked to the peopling of America according to Tbita Hnemeier.
There is evidence that some of the founding population of the Americas went back to East Asia. There is a relationship between ancient Native Americans and the ancestors of Meng Renzi.
The current biology journal has a reference.
The revolution in archaeology and human evolution is covered in Our Human Story.
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