A team of archaeologists
has found a 12,000- to 13,000-year-old skeleton from the late Pleistocene era, deep within the Sac Actun cave system near Tulum, Mexico, as reported to the journal Science.

The project, led by the Mexican government’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) and supported by National Geographic, resulted in the discovery of a nearly complete human skull with an intact cranium and preserved DNA.

The skeleton belongs to a teenage girl, dubbed Naia by the dive team. She’s thought to have been between 15 and 16 years old when she fell more than 100 feet to her death in the cave. The age was established by analyzing tooth enamel, bat-dropped seeds and using the uranium-thorium method.

The discovery shed light on the Western Hemi- sphere’s first people and their relationship to contemporary Native Americans. “The remains were found surrounded by a variety of extinct animals more than 40 meters (300 feet) below sea level in Hoyo Negro, a deep pit within the Sac Actun cave system on Yucatán Peninsula,” according to National Geographic. This is the first time researchers have matched a skeleton with a skull and facial features with DNA linked to hunter-gatherers, who moved to the Bering Land Bridge from Northeast Asia between 26,000 and 18,000 years ago.