Find of Human Bones in South Mexico: Stalagmite Reveals Their Age as 13,000

A prehistoric human skeleton found on the Yucatán Peninsula is at least 13,000 years old and most likely dates from a glacial period at the end of the most recent ice age, the late Pleistocene. A German-Mexican team of researchers led by Wolfgang Stinnesbeck and Arturo González González has now dated the fossil skeleton based on a stalagmite that grew on the hip bone. "The bones from the Chan Hol Cave near the city of Tulúm discovered five years ago represent one of the oldest finds of human bones on the American continent and are evidence of an unexpectedly early settlement in Southern Mexico," says Prof. Stinnesbeck, who is an earth scientist at Heidelberg University. The research findings have now been published in PLOS ONE. The early settlement of the Americas is a subject of controversial debate. A longstanding hypothesis claimed that the first migration took place 12,600 years ago through an ice-free corridor between retreating North American glaciers, via the ice-age Bering Land Bridge between Siberia and Alaska. In recent years, however, this theory is being increasingly called into question by new finds from North and South America.