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Title

Genetic evidence for two founding populations of the Americas.

Authors

Skoglund, Pontus; Mallick, Swapan; Bortolini, Maria Cátira; Chennagiri, Niru; Hünemeier, Tábita; Petzl-Erler, Maria Luiza; Salzano, Francisco Mauro; Patterson, Nick; Reich, David

Abstract

Genetic studies have consistently indicated a single common origin of Native American groups from Central and South America. However, some morphological studies have suggested a more complex picture, whereby the northeast Asian affinities of present-day Native Americans contrast with a distinctive morphology seen in some of the earliest American skeletons, which share traits with present-day Australasians (indigenous groups in Australia, Melanesia, and island Southeast Asia). Here we analyse genome-wide data to show that some Amazonian Native Americans descend partly from a Native American founding population that carried ancestry more closely related to indigenous Australians, New Guineans and Andaman Islanders than to any present-day Eurasians or Native Americans. This signature is not present to the same extent, or at all, in present-day Northern and Central Americans or in a ∼12,600-year-old Clovis-associated genome, suggesting a more diverse set of founding populations of the Americas than previously accepted.

Subjects

BERING Land Bridge; NORTH America; NATIVE Americans -- Origin; GENETIC genealogy; MORPHOLOGY; GENOMICS; FOSSIL hominids; PALEO-Indians; INDIGENOUS Australians

Publication

Nature, 2015, Vol 525, Issue 7567, p104

ISSN

0028-0836

Publication type

Academic Journal

DOI

10.1038/nature14895

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