New genetic analysis done on a baby girl who lived and died in what is now Alaska at the end of the last ice age shows that she belonged to a previously unknown group of ancient Native Americans. The child was only six weeks old when she died, and was found in a burial pit next to the remains of a stillborn baby during excavation of an 11,500-year-old residential camp in Tanana River Valley in Central Alaska. Researchers successfully gathered ancient DNA from her bones, and though the remains were discovered in 2013, a full genetic analysis was not possible until now. The baby had a distinct genetic makeup that made her a member of a separate population. The newly-discovered group, called “ancient Beringians,” appears to have split off from the founding population of Native Americans about 20,000 years ago. Ancestors of other Native Americans pushed south into the continent as the ice caps thawed, but it appears that the Beringians remained in the north until they eventually died out.
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