Bison Fossils Reveal New Data On Human Migration In The Americas

First Posted: Jun 09, 2016 06:10 AM EDT
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Humans may have migrated down the Pacific coast, and not through the Rocky Mountains, scientists now believe.

Researchers thought since the 1970s that the humans first colonized the Americas by crossing Beringia - a land bridge that used to exist between Russia and Alaska. They believed that as early as 13,000 years ago during the late Pleistocene period, the ice-free corridor through the mountains opened up and allowed humans to move south, spreading across the Americas.

However, it seems that they may have gotten in wrong. According to The Guardian, researchers from the University of California in Santa Cruz recently analyzed 78 of the now-extinct steppe bison fossils from the Rocky Mountain ice-free corridor. They collected mitochondrial DNA and dated the fossils to find that two bison groups began intermingling about 13,000 years ago.

This is around the same time as the opening of the ice-free corridor, and evidence of the human activity in the south became apparent. The study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences said that the traces decreased as they moved north, meaning humans migrated from the south to the north, and not the other way around as people believed for over 40 years.

Beth Shapiro, an author of the study and professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz told CNN, "When the corridor opened, people were already living south of there. And because those people were bison hunters, we can assume they would have followed the bison as they moved north into the corridor."

Another reason why scientists believe humans used the Pacific coast first is that the archeological evidence was apparent that humans migrated south to north along the Rocky Mountain route, showing that they already established themselves south of the path after migrating along the Pacific coast.

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