A team of scientists was able to better understand the migration of ancient Native Americans into North American with the fossilized remains of two infants.
Published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the new study detailed the remains of two Native American babies that died some 11,500 years ago. The infants also died in modern-day Alaska, further evidence the first Native Americans got to North American via the land bridge that once existed where the Bering Strait is today, Live Science reported.
Recent studies have provided more insight to how ancient Native Americans migrated to North America by way of the land bridge, also referred to as "Beringia," that connected the continent to Siberia, and therefore Asia.
"These infants are the earliest human remains in northern North America, and they carry distinctly Native American lineages," study senior author Dennis O'Rourke, professor of anthropology at the University of Utah, said in a press release. "We see diversity that is not present in modern Native American populations of the north and we see it at a fairly early date. This is evidence there was substantial genetic variation in the Beringian population before any of them moved south."
This theory of Native Americans' migration to North America from Siberia is referred to as the "Beringian standstill theory." Some migrants are believed to have stayed in Beringia for a time before eventually finishing the journey.
Mulligan told Live Science the study "really solidifies the argument for a single migration by showing that all major New World mitochondrial haplogroups can be found in ancient populations in the New World at the right time and in the right place."
