After 10,000 years, ice-age skeleton gets back human form

Scientists claim to have reconstructed the image of Las Palmas Woman, one of the oldest sets of human remains in the Americas, discovered in a flooded cave in southeastern Mexico.

A joint team from Mexico and France reconstructed the face and appearance of the woman, who was in her late 40s, 152 centimetres tall and weighed around 60 kgs, Spanish news agency the EFE quoted a communique of Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History as saying.

The institute said that the reconstructed features of the woman, found in a cave in Quintana Roo state, "are similar to those of populations in Southeast Asia which indicates that the migrations that populated Americas did not come only from northern Asia but also from the central and southern regions".

The Las Palmas Woman lived during the ice age some 10,000 years ago in what is today the Yucatan Peninsula, and was discovered in 2002. The skeleton "was found nearly complete and in a good state of preservation, so that the most advanced studies of forensic anthropology could be performed on it," according to the institute.

The sculpture of the entire body, done in France, can be seen in the exposition in the city of Guanajuato. To date the oldest human remains in the Americas are those belonging to the so-called Naharon Woman, who lived some 11,600 years ago, which were found in Quintana Roo.Alejandro Terrazas of the National Autonomous University of Mexico said the reconstruction of the Las Palmas Woman was done according to criteria of forensic anthropology.

via After 10,000 years, ice-age skeleton gets back human form.