From genetics to geoscience, SA has been the setting for a string of major scientific advances
The Bloodhound LSR en route to breaking through the 1,000km/h mark in the Northern Cape. Picture: Bloodhound LSR
The remains of 11 individuals in the University of Cape Town’s skeletal collection were found to have been unethically obtained in the 1920s. It turned out that nine of the individuals were Khoisan farmworkers whose remains were dug up on a farm near Sutherland in the Northern Cape. A major restitution process will lead to their reburial in 2020.
DNA experts were able to establish ancestral genetic relationships, while archaeologists conducted a survey of the cemetery and the disturbed graves. Finally, the individuals’ faces were recreated.In 2019 geneticists at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research grew tiny livers from skin cells. The aim is to test which Western medicines may be toxic to Africans without having to do a clinical trial on humans.
In October, the British Bloodhound LSR vehicle arrived at Hakskeen Pan in the Northern Cape for high-speed tests that broke the 1,000km/h mark. Hopes are now high that it will reach its 1,610km/h target in 2020.Half an hour’s high-speed drive southeast, but still in the Northern Cape, the MeerKAT telescope near Carnarvon made the first observation sensitive enough to reveal distant galaxies like our own that have never been observed before.
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