Genetic evidence for two founding populations of the Americas.
Skoglund, Pontus 1, 2, c1; Mallick, Swapan 1, 2, 3; Bortolini, Maria Catira 4; Chennagiri, Niru 1, 2; Hunemeier, Tabita 5; Petzl-Erler, Maria Luiza 6; Salzano, Francisco Mauro 4; Patterson, Nick 2; Reich, David 1, 2, 3, c2
[Letter] Nature. 525(7567):104-108, September 3, 2015.

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: Genetic studies have consistently indicated a single common origin of Native American groups from Central and South America 1,2,3,4. 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) 5,6,7,8. 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.

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