“…The biological variation of the native populations of Argentina and the southernmost region of South America has been extensively studied, through the study of morphological (Cocilovo andDi Rienzo, 1984-1985;Cocilovo andNeves, 1988-1989;Rothammer et al, 1984Rothammer et al, , 1988Rothammer et al, -1989Lahr, 1995;Lalueza et al, 1996;Hernández et al, 1997;Marcellino and Colantonio, 2000;Gonzá lez-José et al, 2001a,b, 2003Fabra et al, 2005), and molecular data (Dipierri et al, 1998(Dipierri et al, , 2000Demarchi, 2000;Demarchi et al, 2001;Goicoechea et al, 2001;Dejean et al, 2004;Cabana et al, 2006). However, questions about the origins and strategies of dispersion of the colonizer populations remain unresolved and controversial, in part because the extinct populations that once inhabited the central mountains of Argentina, archaeologically known as Sierras Centrales, have received little attention (Ameghino, 1885(Ameghino, , 1889González, 1944;Cocilovo, 1984;Marcellino, 1992;Marcellino and Colantonio, 1993).…”