On the Number of New World Founders

Via Dienekes' Anthropology Blog I ran into this paper (On the Number of New World Founders: A Population Genetic Portrait of the Peopling of the Americas) with this commentary.

The sum up:

His [Jody Hey's] analysis suggests that only about 70 individuals left their ancestral Asian population, estimated at about 9,000 individuals, to reach America 7,000 to 14,000 years ago. Archeological evidence places the earliest American inhabitants in the New World at around 14,000 years ago. Though Hey’s estimates are more recent, they also indicate a high probability at this time period. Hey did not include genetic data from Eskimo-Aleut and Na Déne speakers, so the number of migrations was not addressed. But with this new approach, researchers will be able to explore this and many other questions to fill in the details of the first American immigration.

I'm not a population geneticist, so I'll leave it at that.

Update: Additional commentary at John Hawks Anthropology Weblog.