Late Pleistocene Human Skeleton and mtDNA Link Paleoamericans and Modern Native Americans

American Beauty Modern Native American ancestry traces back to an East Asian migration across Beringia. However, some Native American skeletons from the late Pleistocene show phenotypic characteristics more similar to other, more geographically distant, human populations. Chatters et al. (p. 750 ) describe a skeleton with a Paleoamerican phenotype from the eastern Yucatan, dating to approximately 12 to 13 thousand years ago, with a relatively common extant Native American mitochondrial DNA haplotype. The Paleoamerican phenotype may thus have evolved independently among Native American populations.