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Inside a cave so deep and dark it's called Hoyo Negro, or Spanish for "black hole," divers are transporting a 12,000-year-old skull for 3D scanning. The skull belongs to one of the oldest and most complete skeletons ever found in the Americas.
The skeleton, belonging to a 15- or 16-year-old girl whom scientists have named Naia, helps solve a long-running debate on what early Americans looked like. Naia's narrow face and prominent forehead look nothing like Native Americas, but her DNA markers prove their related ancestry.
At the time of her death at the end of the ice age, the caves on the Yucatan peninsula were likely dry. Since then, rising sea levels have flooded the caves. Divers first discovered Naia's bones, along with the bones of extinct animals like saber-toothed cats and giant ground sloths, in 2007. Her bones have since been moved after unauthorized divers entered the cave.
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