- Sep 12, 2009
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Adapted from a news release issued by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).
Thursday 22 September 2011
An international team of researchers, including a UK collaboration led by BBSRC- and MRC-funded researchers at Imperial College London, with colleagues at University College London, and University of Cambridge has for the first time sequenced the genome of a man who was an Aboriginal Australian. They have shown that modern day Aboriginal Australians are the direct descendents of the first people who arrived on the continent some 50,000 years ago and that those ancestors left Africa earlier than their European and Asian counterparts. The work is published this evening (22 September 2011) in the journal Science.
Although there is good archaeological evidence that shows humans in Australia around 50,000 years ago, this genome study re-writes the story of their journey there. The study provides good evidence that Aboriginal Australians are descendents of the earliest modern explorers, leaving Africa around 24,000 years before their Asian and European counterparts. This is contrary to the previous and most widely accepted theory that all modern humans derive from a single out-of-Africa migration wave into Europe, Asia, and Australia. Read more: http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_23-9-2011-10-41-8
Thursday 22 September 2011
An international team of researchers, including a UK collaboration led by BBSRC- and MRC-funded researchers at Imperial College London, with colleagues at University College London, and University of Cambridge has for the first time sequenced the genome of a man who was an Aboriginal Australian. They have shown that modern day Aboriginal Australians are the direct descendents of the first people who arrived on the continent some 50,000 years ago and that those ancestors left Africa earlier than their European and Asian counterparts. The work is published this evening (22 September 2011) in the journal Science.
Although there is good archaeological evidence that shows humans in Australia around 50,000 years ago, this genome study re-writes the story of their journey there. The study provides good evidence that Aboriginal Australians are descendents of the earliest modern explorers, leaving Africa around 24,000 years before their Asian and European counterparts. This is contrary to the previous and most widely accepted theory that all modern humans derive from a single out-of-Africa migration wave into Europe, Asia, and Australia. Read more: http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_23-9-2011-10-41-8