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Skulls found in Mexico suggest the early Americans would have said 'G'day mate' By Steve Connor, Science Editor 04 September 2003 The accepted theory of how prehistoric humans first migrated to America has been challenged by a study of an ancient set of bones unearthed in Mexico. An analysis of 33 skulls found on the Mexican peninsula of Baja California suggests that the first Americans were not north Asians who crossed to the American continent about 12,000 years ago. The skulls more closely resemble the present-day natives of Australia and the South Pacific, suggesting that there might have been an...

US colonisation given new twist 05.09.2003 By STEVE CONNOR http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3521751&thesection=news&thesubsection=world The accepted theory of how prehistoric humans colonised America has been challenged by a study of bones unearthed in Mexico. An analysis of 33 skulls found on the Mexican peninsula of Baja California suggests that the first Americans did not migrate across the Bering Strait separating modern Russia and Alaska 12,000 years ago. The skulls more closely resemble the present-day native people of Australia and the South Pacific, suggesting that there might have been a much earlier colonisation of America via a different route. The research, published in the...

Some people in the Brazilian Amazon are very distant relations of indigenous Australians, New Guineans and other Australasians, two groups of scientists who conducted detailed genetic analyses reported Tuesday. But the researchers disagree on the source of that ancestry. The connection is ancient, all agree, and attributable to Eurasian migrants to the Americas who had some Australasian ancestry, the scientists said. But one group said the evidence is clear that two different populations came from Siberia to settle the Americas 15,000 or more years ago. The other scientific team says there was only one founding population from which all indigenous...

The largest collection of early American skulls ever studied is lending credence to a controversial theory that two distinct populations of humans--rather than one--colonized the New World. If true, the findings indicate that people who shared an ancestry with modern day Australians and Melanesians may have settled on the continents somewhat earlier than immigrants from northeast Asia. Not so long ago, the origins of the first Americans seemed fairly certain: Beginning about 12,000 years ago, people from northeast Asia entered North America via the Bering landbridge in several waves of immigration. These ancestors of present-day Native Americans spread out to...

The 7,500- to 11,000-year-old remains suggest the oldest settlers of the Americas came from different genetic stock than more recent Native Americans. Modern Native Americans share traits with Mongoloid peoples of Mongolia, China, and Siberia, the researchers said. But they found dozens of skulls from Brazil appear much more similar to modern Australians, Melanesians, and Sub-Saharan Africans. A Brazilian study involving a large collection of South American skulls suggests at least two distinct groups of early humans colonized the Americas. Anthropologists Walter Neves and Mark Hubbe of the University of Sao Paulo studied 81 skulls of early humans and found...