Stephanie Pappas, reporting for LiveScience:
The new study, published Tuesday (April 23) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, suggests that about 1,000 to 3,000 individuals originally landed on Australia’s shores.
“This is largely speculative, but I think this suggests something more than accidental colonization by a small group on a raft of vegetation or other unplanned voyage,” study researcher Alan Williams, a doctoral candidate at The Australian National University, wrote in an email.