South Africa

The human family tree is being shuffled around again. A new study suggests that Homo erectus existed 100,000 to 200,000 years earlier than previously thought, meaning they lived alongside species they were once thought to have descended from.

Combining studies of genetics, geology and climate history, scientists from Australia and South Africa say they’ve identified what could be called the “homeland” of modern humans – a vast, ancient wetland system in southern Africa.

South African researchers found new evidence supporting the hypothesis that Earth was struck by an asteroid 12,800 years ago, causing global cooling.

​Rather than retiring from a day of elephant spotting to a four-walled hotel room with a window or two, safari guests of the South Africa’s Cheetah Plains Game Lodge will have plenty of opportunities for extracurricular connections with nature.

Archaeologists have uncovered what may be the oldest human-made drawings ever found. Discovered in a cave in South Africa, the cross-hatch pattern was drawn in red ochre and found to date back over 70,000 years, making the image more than 30,000 years older than the previous reigning champion.

The MeerKAT radio telescope array is finally up and running in South Africa. To show off what the facility can do, astronomers have pointed all 64 antennas towards the center of the Milky Way galaxy, and snapped one of the clearest shots ever taken of the mysterious region.

Billions of years ago, the Great Oxygenation Event wiped out most life on Earth at the time. This ramped up about 2.5 billion years ago, but now scientists have discovered signs of the oldest known “oxygen oasis” in South Africa, showing that the process started almost half a billion years earlier.

A system called the NEWgenerator is designed to help take the strain off sewage infrastructure in developing countries, acting as a mini wastewater treatment plant that recovers energy, clean water and fertilizer from sewage. Units will soon be installed in South Africa.

High-profile firm Heatherwick Studio recently took the wraps off a new £30 million (around US$40 million) museum in Cape Town, South Africa named the Zeitz MOCAA. The ambitious project involved transforming an existing grain silo into the country's largest art museum.

There are a number of trials being conducted to investigate how small aerial surveillance aircraft can be used to combat poaching. The latest effort involves the use of AI software to quickly identify poachers and animals in drone footage, in an attempt to better protect elephants and rhinos.

Landing somewhere between harmless foam-firing toys and drones packing semi-automatic handguns is the DartDrone, a version of Haevic’s SuperDrone modified to carry an air gun that fires darts, for use by veterinarians and the game animal industry.

A turtle fossil pulled out of the ground by an 8-year-old boy in South Africa helped scientists learn more about the early uses and evolution of the turtle shell.