Horn Rock Shelter a skull 11,000 years old with a distinct morphology

Horn Rock Shelter is located in Texas, and is the site of a double burial, a middle aged man (37 - 44 years old) and a girl of 10 - 11. Apparently the man was a shaman. Girl and shaman were buried together in this cave as shown in the image below (girl on the Left).

A recent comment on my Chapala "homo erectus" brow ridge revisited post prompted me to look into this site and its oddly shaped male skull (Thank you William).

You can read about the site, the skeletons and the tools and articles found in the grave, in this article: New Look at the Double Burial from Horn Shelter No. 2, by Margaret A. Jodry and Douglas W. Owsley 2014.

The remarkable point seems to be the shape of the man's skull, as portrayed in National Geographic, from which this image (below) was taken:

The skull appears to have distinctive features yet this paper says that there were "no significant differences" between the Horn individuals and later Central Texas populations.

This is a reconstruction of the male skull:

Notice the brow ridges. Credits

The bust depicting how the shaman looked when he was alive also displays prominent brow ridges:

The remains are old, 11,100 years BP, and surely reflect the great morphological diversity of the Paleoindians, lost during the depopulation of the Americas due to illness brought by the Europeans after 1492 (flu, measles, small pox, just to mention a few), diseases which wiped out millions of Native Americans in a few years.

There are several news articles dating to the period 2010-15 that mention samples having been taken for DNA analysis, but no results have appeared in print as a formal paper, only articles in newspapers. But they are interesting:

Waco Tribune Herald, 2010: "The handful of other ancient American remains whose mtDNA has been studied carry one of the five genetic markers that various Native American groups share. Not so with the Horn Shelter bones, according to numerous tests Baker has done so far.
'The results are different from what you'd expect from Native Americans,' she said. 'I'm looking at the sequence and I'm not able to determine a haplogroup. . . . Usually, when I run the sequence, I get something very clear.'
Baker is planning to send the bone samples to another laboratory for retesting to see if her results can be replicated"

KWTX, 2017: "Dr. Doug Owsley, head of the division of physical anthropology at the Smithsonian, said DNA material has been successfully recovered from the bones of a little girl recovered at the Horn Shelter, but analysis has not yet been completed.
He also said scientists failed in their effort to recover DNA material from adult bones found in the same grave, but are now trying a different technique to recover the material."

The local Museum at the site (Bosque Museum) published in 2013: "Dr. Lori Baker of Baylor University has received the most recent DNA results on the Horn Shelter Man. We are awaiting the publication of her report to find out what the results show. Earlier DNA studies showed that Horn Shelter Man was not related to modern Native Americans."

There is a paper: 2012 Pack, FL, Hulsey, BI, and Cabana GS. "Report on DNA Findings for the Horn Shelter Site." Report submitted to Dr. Lori Baker, Baylor University.

It is surprising that the results have not been revealed after all these years...

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