Continental Survivors: Baja skulls shake up American ancestry

Around 600 years ago, the Pericú people roamed the southern tip of what is now Mexico’s Baja peninsula, a finger of land that extends below California. Although the Spanish conquest spelled their demise in the 16th century, the Pericú were living links to America’s first settlers, according to a new anthropological study.

FACING BACK. Two views (above and below) of a skull from a Baja population that may illuminate the settlement of the Americas.