Washington: A 12,000-year-old female skull discovered in Mexico could be the oldest human remains ever unearthed in the Americas and may shed light on the early settlement of the region, scientists say.
The skull was excavated inside an underground cave in Mexico's eastern state of Quintana Roo, and could date back to between 10,000 and 12,000 years, researchers said.
Paris-based Atelier Daynes reconstructed the skull to determine the sex, age and other characteristics.
The remains appear to belong to none of the known indigenous groups in the Americas, "in part because the skull is not very similar to those of today's indigenous groups," said lead researcher Alejandro Terrazas Mata from Mexico's National Autonomous University (UNAM).
The prevalent theory about the region's early settlers holds that a group of Asiatic people migrated across the Bering Strait about 15,000 years ago, 'Xinhua' reported.
Known as Paleoamericans, their craniofacial features share common ancestry with people from south Asia or the Pacific Rim.
Another migration of a different group who became the ancestor of Amerindians took place 9,000 years ago.
Researchers could not determine whether the skull belonged to an ancestor of the Amerindians or not.
