The Trail Creek child, at approximately 9,000 years, is not part of the pre-Clovis debate — she lived well after the Clovis horizon.

But her Ancient Beringian ancestry is part of the broader question of founding population diversity and the specific demographic events that shaped the first Americans.

If Ancient Beringians were already distinct from Northern Native Americans by the time of USR1 at 11,500 years — and the genomic evidence suggests they were — then the divergence between these lineages must have occurred even earlier, during the period of Beringian isolation or in the early stages of the American dispersal.

Understanding when and where these early divergences occurred requires more ancient genomes from more geographic locations and more time periods.