Genomic research published in 2026 revealed that koalas suffered a severe population collapse beginning about 100,000 years ago—before humans reached Australia—as glacial cooling and aridification destroyed and fragmented their forest habitat. Every living koala descends from the small eastern population that survived, then expanded and split into today’s major populations as forests recovered after the last ice age.
ScienceBlog.com,
The koala population collapse was already underway long before the first people reached Australia, according to a new reading…