After developing source relationships for more than a year, science reporter Christina Larson secured exclusive media access for the AP to visit a University of Sao Paulo lab housing 27,000-year-old fossils and attracting scientific acclaim for new discoveries that are upending long-held ideas about prehistoric humanity in the Americas.
She enlisted Health & Science video journalist Mary Conlon to help visually convey the wonder and excitement of new findings that the first people in North and South America may have arrived 10,000 years earlier than researchers once believed and lived for millennia alongside extinct New World animals like giant ground sloths, mastodons and dire wolves. Peter Hamlin from the AP Graphics team created an original illustration that brought to life the fascinating idea of humans and extinct megafauna sharing prehistoric American landscapes. The story sparked trending discussion on social media in English and in Portuguese and has resulted in other outlets reaching out to the pioneering female scientists covered
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