by ALISON ABBOTT
http://youtu.be/KXDROyr-G4I
The near-intact skeleton of a delicately built teenage girl, who died more than 12,000 years ago in what is today’s Mexico, could help to solve the riddle of how the Americas were first populated.
Cave divers discovered the skeleton seven years ago in a complex of flooded caverns known as Hoyo Negro, in the jungles of the Yucatan Peninsula. They called her Naia, after the naiads, the water nymphs of Greek mythology. She lies in a collapsed chamber together with the remains of 26 other large mammals, including a saber-toothed tiger, 600 metres from the nearest sinkhole. Most of the mammals became extinct around 13,000 years ago.
Scientific American for more