Lake Mungo remains "Homo sapiens" (human) remains found on the Australian continent. Lake Mungo is a dry lake located in south-eastern Australia, in the south-western portion of New South Wales. It is about due west of Sydney and north-east of Mildura, and 110 km north-west of Balranald. The lake is the central feature of Mungo National Park, and is one of seventeen lakes in the World Heritage listed Willandra Lakes Region. Sediments at Lake Mungo have been deposited over more than 100,000 years. There are three distinct layers of sands and soil forming the Walls around the edge of the lake. The oldest
Lake Mungo remains the original (perhaps remarkably small) group of humans who left Africa via the middle-East. In 2001, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from the Lake Mungo 3 (LM3) skeleton was published and compared with several other sequences. It was found to have more than the expected number of sequence differences when compared to modern human DNA (CRS). Comparison of the mitochondrial DNA with that of ancient and modern Aborigines led to the conclusion that Mungo Man fell outside the range of genetic variation seen in Australian Aboriginal people, and was used to support the multiregional origin of modern humans hypothesis. These results proved