Carl Zimmer, courtesy of the New York Times, where the title runs “How Did Aboriginal Australians Arrive on the Continent? DNA Helps Solve a Mystery”
Human skeletons and archaeological remains in Australia can be traced back nearly 50,000 years before the trail disappears. Before then, apparently, Australia was free of humans. So how did people get there, and when? Where did humans first arrive on the continent, and how did they spread across the entire landmass?
Answers to some of these questions are stored in the DNA of Aboriginal Australians. A genetic study of 111 Aboriginal Australians, published on Wednesday, offers an interesting — and, in some respects, unexpected — view of their remarkable story.

A study found that all living Aboriginal Australians descend from a single founding population that arrived about 50,000 years ago… Pic fr. PC Poulsen/Hulton Archive/Getty
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