For people moving through Beringia — crossing from northeastern Asia into the Americas in the period when the land connection existed — this landscape would have been a resource-rich environment rather than a barrier.

The animals it supported were prey for mobile hunting people who had been living in comparable environments in northern Asia for tens of thousands of years.

The specific challenges of Arctic survival — extreme cold, darkness during the polar winter, the need for specialized clothing and shelter — were challenges that the ancestral Beringian populations had been solving for a very long time before they moved into the Americas.

The key point for understanding the Trail Creek tooth is that Beringia was not simply a crossing zone — a narrow bridge to sprint across between two continents.