America's only Clovis skeleton genome offers clues to Native American ancestry

Wednesday, February 12, 2014 - 13:31 in Paleontology & Archaeology

They lived in America about 13,000 years ago where they hunted mammoth, mastodons and giant bison with big spears. The Clovis people were not the first humans in America, but they represent the first humans with a wide expansion on the North American continent – until the culture mysteriously disappeared only a few hundred years after its origin. Who the Clovis people were and which present day humans they are related to has been discussed intensely and the issue has a key role in the discussion about how the Americas were peopled. Today there exists only one human skeleton found in association with Clovis tools and at the same time it is among the oldest human skeletons in the Americas. It is a small boy between 1 and 1.5 years of age – found in a 12,600 old burial site, called the Anzick Site, in Wilsall, Montana, USA. Now an...

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