Since two college students first stumbled upon his remains in July 1996, Kennewick Man has been the subject of a custody battle: Native American tribes claimed the bones as an ancestor's remains. Scientists disagreed and filed suit to keep Kennewick Man out of a Native American burial ground — and available for further study. Now, as The New York Times reports, new DNA evidence published in the journal Nature promises to award custody to the tribes. “It’s very clear that Kennewick Man is most closely related to contemporary Native Americans,” Eske Willerslev, a University of Copenhagen geneticist and the study's lead author, told The Times. “In my view, it’s bone-solid.”
