The study suggests bushfires have been part of the Australian landscape for more than 60 million years.
Australian bushfires appeared 50 million years earlier than previously thought and probably contributed to transforming the landscape from rainforest into the country's dry eucalypt forests of today, according to the authors of a new study from The Australian National University. The study, led by Professor Mike Crisp of the Research School of Biology at ANU, sheds new light on the history of the landscape of Australia and is a 'smoking gun' that eucalypts and bushfires are inextricably linked in Australian history. The results of the study are published today . By studying pollen fossils, the researcher's were able to identify when eucalypts developed their unique ability to recover from bushfires. They found that this time coincides with when the landscape of Australia started to change. ?In other parts of the world that have similar environmental conditions to Australia, such as California with its oak-dominated forests, a severe bushfire will kill everything above ground. Eucalypts, however, have developed a unique capacity to recover from fire,? said Professor Crisp.
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