Scientists have accurately aged the skeleton of Naia, a girl who lived about 12,000 years ago and whose bones were discovered by a diver in 2007.

According to the Washington Post, a genetic study, published in the journal Science, explores the differences between early Paleoamericans and the Native Americans. The difference was likely a sudden and rapid human evolution.

Mitochondrial DNA analysis revealed the Paleamericans and Native Americans were the same people and had the same marker as one common across the Americas today. The researchers said it came from a population that lived on Beringia, an ancient landbridge between Alaska and Siberia.

The divers found Naia's bones - a well-preserved skull with teeth - in an underwater cave system in Yucatan, Mexico. They concluded she lived during a dry period and had gone to get water when she fell into a pit and died. Researchers called the cave "Hoyo Negro" (black hole) and said it was similar to the Awash Valley in Ethiopia, Africa, the discovery site of another early human ancestor named Lucy.

"The Hoyo Negro girl was related to living Native Americans and has ancestry from the same Beringian population," Deborah Bolnick, assistant professor of anthropology at The University of Texas at Austin, said in a press release. "This study therefore provides no support for the hypothesis that Paleoamericans migrated from Southeast Asia, Australia or Europe.  Instead, it shows that Paleoamericans could have come from Beringia, like contemporary Native Americans, even though they exhibit some distinctive skull and facial features. The physical differences between Paleoamericans and Native Americans today are more likely due to changes that occurred in Beringia and the Americas over the last 9,000 years."

NBC News reported earlier this year the discovery of a baby from Beringia and he represents evidence Native Americans descended from the Beringinians. It means the Native Americans migrated into North America through Asia and over a landbridge that is now underwater.

The new discovery surrounding Naia also means early Paleoamericans were descendants of the earliest Native Americans who lived in Beringia before entering North America.

"It appears that she fell quite a distance, and struck something hard enough to fracture her pelvis," study principal author James Chatters told NBC News of Naia. "You can imagine a young woman either lost in the dark in a cave... [or] she may have been looking for water, even with a group looking for water, and getting water out of the little puddle that was in the bottom of Hoyo Negro periodically, and fallen in. And no one could get her out once it happened."