The DNA used in the new study comes from aboriginal hair collected during a series of expeditions between 1926 and 1963. He and his colleagues first sought consent for the tests from the descendants of the people whose hair samples had been collected. Advertisement Continue reading the main storyMitochondrial DNA gradually accumulates mutations at a roughly regular rate, ticking like a molecular clock. When that happened, Dr. Cooper said, “there’s only one response — mass migration.”In Australia, however, aborigines did not depend on crops and lived as nomads in discrete regions. Advertisement Continue reading the main story“We can do the entire genome for each of these samples,” Dr. Cooper said.

Source: New York Times March 08, 2017 18:00 UTC