What happened to it after 9,000 years is a question for future research — research that will require more ancient specimens, more sophisticated genetic methods, and more careful collaboration between researchers and the Indigenous communities whose ancestral histories are being studied.

Why the Arctic Human-Remains Record Is So Sparse

The Trail Creek tooth’s rarity — its status as one of the oldest known human remains from the North American Arctic — reflects something important about the challenges of the archaeological record in high-latitude environments.

The North American Arctic and subarctic have been inhabited by human beings for at least 14,000 years, and possibly longer.

The descendants of the founding populations who crossed through Beringia spread across Alaska and eventually into the Canadian Arctic, Greenland, and the eastern Arctic coast of North America.