"It's also in agreement with the first wave of [animal] extinctions in New Zealand, and with the first evidence of widespread lowland deforestation."
The new date also conforms with Maori genealogy, she added.
(Read: "Rat Invasions Causing Seabird Decline Worldwide" [February 21, 2008].)
The study appeared today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Rapid Dispersal
Seeds preserved in peat bogs and swamps all over New Zealand bore distinctive bite marks.
(See photos of New Zealand's land and people.)
Similar studies on other islands, Wilmshurst said, would "start to piece together the last major migration of people from West Polynesia to East Polynesia with a greater degree of confidence and accuracy."
David Lowe of Waikato University in Hamilton, New Zealand, was not involved in the new study.
He said it confirmed previous findings based on pollen samples, tree-ring growth, and soil layers.
"There are lots of lines of evidence, direct and indirect," Lowe said.
Polynesian explorers may well have used the Kermadec Islands, which is 466 miles (750 kilometers) northeast of New Zealand, as a stepping-stone, he said.
The explorers, he added, "could have rapidly checked out what else was beyond New Zealand: Norfolk Island, the Auckland Islands, and later, the Chatham Islands."
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