The gap between those two data points — nearly 10,000 years — is almost entirely empty in the ancient genomic record.

Whether the pre-Clovis people of White Sands were part of the same founding lineage that eventually gave rise to the Clovis people and to Anzick-1, or whether they were a separate and earlier migration whose genomic legacy is difficult to detect in modern populations, is not currently knowable from the available evidence.

Finding ancient DNA from pre-Clovis contexts — from individuals who lived in the Americas before 15,000 years ago — is one of the most important goals of the field.

The difficulty is that ancient DNA preservation at these timescales is exceptional rather than common, and contexts that produce human remains from this period are extremely rare.