Researchers plan to extract the entire skeleton of a teenage girl who almost 13,000 years ago fell into a deep hole in a Mexican cave and died, according to the Associated Press.
Only a molar and a fragment of a rib have been removed from the underground cave where the remains were found back in 2007, said archaeologist Pilar Luna. Once recovered, the remains will then be studied and displayed.
The remains will likely be displayed in Quintana Roo state where the girl was discovered, according to Luna, who is the deputy director of Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology
The girl was approximately 4 feet 10 inches tall, and around 15 or 16 years old when she died, according to Reuters.
Researchers have speculated that the girl wandered off into a cave to find freshwater and fell to her death into an "inescapable trap" 100 feet deep, according to archeologist James Chatters of the firm of Applied Paleoscience, one of the leaders of the study.
"It was a small cranium laying upside down with a perfect set of teeth and dark eye sockets looking back at us," said Alberto Nava said, one of the divers, regarding the skull, according to Reuters.
Her remains were found underwater alongside bones of more than two dozen beasts. The girl's skull was on a ledge, lying upside down, according to AP.
Divers named her "Naia" after a water nymph from Greek mythology.
Other bones discovered include cave bears, giant ground sloths, saber-toothed tigers, and an elephant relative called a gomphothere.
Research, which was led by the Mexican government's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) and supported by the National Geographic Society, was published in the journal Science.
The girl was discovered by chance when divers were mapping water-filled caves north of the city of Tulum, in eastern part of the Yucatan Peninsula, according to AP.
See Now: OnePlus 6: How Different Will It Be From OnePlus 5?
