[6][1] In 2022, after a NAGPRA request, Arlington Springs Man was repatriated to the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Mission Indians for reburial according to their native customs at an undisclosed location.
[7] It was under the leadership of Phil C. Orr, curator of anthropology and paleontology at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, who had been prospecting the steep bluffs of Arlington Canyon annually since 1946.
[9][8] At this point, Orr looked up the canyon wall and noticed what he thought was a femur bone eroding from a cut bank, later determined to be about 37 feet deep from the surface.
[11] Orr named him Arlington Springs Man, wrapped the bones in plaster, and stored them at the museum where they sat undisturbed and largely overlooked for the next 30 years.
[9] The coastal regions of the island, which Paleo-Indians likely inhabited, has since been inundated by sea-level rise, meaning the location of Arlington Canyon was in the interior miles from the coast.
[9] His presence on an island at such an early date demonstrates that the earliest Paleoindians had watercraft capable of crossing the Santa Barbara Channel, and lends credence to a coastal migration theory for the peopling of the Americas, using boats to travel south from Siberia and Alaska.
[15] According to the museum president, they were "honored to care for this important cultural heritage for many years and now find it deeply satisfying [to] transfer custody back to the Chumash community".