Genes extinguish Aboriginal fire theory

For thousands of years, Australia's Aboriginal people have used fire to hunt and to manage the landscape. Some scientists have argued that when people first arrived in Australia they set a large number of these fires, which reshaped the country's ecosystems.  A new study examines this hypothesis by analysing the genetic fingerprints of more than 1400 trees from the Callitris genus, fire-sensitive conifers found across the continent.