Notizie in inglese per livelli

New Genome Study Shows Koalas Nearly Vanished Long Before Humans Ever Reached Australia

A new DNA study from researchers at the University of Sydney and Texas A&M University has rewritten the timeline of the koala's population history, showing that a dramatic collapse began about 100,000 years ago and bottomed out during the last ice age, tens of thousands of years before humans arrived on the continent. By measuring the koala's own mutation rate directly, rather than borrowing estimates from distantly related mammals, the team traced the crash to shifting climate conditions rather than early human hunting.