Future research on the Hoyo Negro remains — if any is conducted — will have to work around this constraint.

New non-invasive or minimally invasive methods may eventually make it possible to extract additional information from the bones without removing them from the cave.

But for now, the scientific record of Naia is defined by what was possible to extract during the initial research phases, and the haplogroup D1 result is the most important genetic finding from that material.

How The Finding Was Received Beyond Science

When the Hoyo Negro paper appeared in Science in 2014, it attracted significant attention outside the academic community as well as within it.