New evidence for an early settlement of the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico: The Chan Hol 3 woman and her meaning for the Peopling of the Americas
Fig 1
Geographical location of the Chan Hol 3 anthropological site.
(A) Location of submerged caves containing human skeletal remains dating to >9 ky BP in the Tulum area of Quintana Roo, Mexico. Yellow dots refer to anthropological sites mentioned in the text with presence of human remains [1, 3–6]. The red dot marks the Chan Hol cave described previously by González González et al. [3, 6] and Stinnesbeck et al. [5]. (B) Close-up of the black box seen in Fig 1A with location of the three human skeletons found within the Chan Hol cave. (C) The Chan Hol 3 anthropological site. Note that human bones are spread over an area of 3 x 1 m. The original anatomical position of the skeleton is thus not preserved. The red arrow points to distal radius fragment while the blue arrow indicates position of finger bones (metacarpals, phalanges) depicted in Fig 2. A prominent flat limestone rock 0.3 wide and 0.2 m long and 50 mm in thickness is seen in the upper right quadrant of the photo, and the mandible immediately in front of this rock slab. (D) Interpretative drawing of the site. (E) The skull rotated upside down. It is likely this was water-transported and rolled for about 0.5 m to this position. The red arrow points to a broken stalagmite below the limestone slab seen in Fig 1C and 1D. (F) Flowstone encrusting phalangeal bones used for 230Th/U-dating of the Chan Hol 3 skeleton (see Fig 2 for details).