New telescope to be in South Africa, Australia

PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) — Australia and South Africa will share hosting of a giant radio telescope made up of thousands of separate dishes and intended to help scientists figure out the make-up of the universe, the international consortium overseeing the project announced.

South Africa led an African consortium that included Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia and Zambia, and telescopes will be erected in all its partners. In South Africa, dishes will be added to a remote site in the arid Karoo desert where a smaller radio telescope project already is underway.

South Africa and Australia, which partnered with New Zealand in bidding for the project, had competed fiercely. South Africa claimed victory Friday, saying it got two of the projects three major components.

"We may feel slightly disappointed that we didn't get the whole thing. But I think one should emphasize that we did get most of it," said Justin Jonas, the chief South African scientist on the project. "Two-thirds of the biggest instrument in the world is still the biggest instrument in the world."

South Africa's science minister Naledi Pandor and scientists who had prepared the country's bid celebrated with an Africa-shaped cake at a news conference in South Africa's capital.

"This marks a real turning point in Africa, where we are becoming a destination for science and engineering, and not just a place where there are resources and tourism opportunities," Jonas added.

Australia also welcomed the split decision.

"It is an outstanding result for the Australia-New Zealand bid after many years of preparation and an intensive international process," said Sen. Chris Evans, Australia's science minister.

The Square Kilometer Array telescope will be 50 times more sensitive and scan the sky 10,000 times faster than any existing telescope. It requires huge open spaces with very few humans.

John Womersley, chair of the consortium's board, said the telescope will help scientists answer key questions: "Where do we come from? Where are we going? What is this universe we live in?"

"We don't understand what 96 percent of our universe is made of," he said.

The organization said dividing construction of the telescope will "maximize on investments already made by both Australia and South Africa."

Womersley said that splitting construction between the two nations will likely add around 10 percent to the €350 million ($439 million) cost of the first phase of building the giant telescope. But he said there would be a payoff for astronomers.

"It delivers more science in phase one. The capabilities of this instrument are greater than the original design," Womersley said.

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Associated Press writer Mike Corder contributed from Amsterdam.

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Two-million-year-old South Africa fossils show links to man

One of the two Sediba skeletons is displayed at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg September 8, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Stringer

By Jon Herskovitz

JOHANNESBURG | Fri Sep 9, 2011 5:27pm EDT

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A well-preserved set of 2-million-year-old fossils shows a part-human, part-ape species had hands similar to man, sophisticated ankles that helped in movement and a surprisingly tiny but advanced brain, a report released Thursday said.

The fossils, discovered in a sunken cave north of Johannesburg, may change views of the origins of humans. They show a combination of anatomical features never seen before, demonstrating close links to the species and humans.

"The many very advanced features found in the brain and body, and the earlier date make it possibly the best candidate ancestor for our genus, the genus Homo, more so than previous discoveries," said Lee Berger, at the Institute for Human Evolution at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

Berger and a team of experts examined fossils from the site, and in findings to be published in the prestigious periodical Science said they found the most complete hand on the species called hominins, the most complete, undistorted hip bone and well-preserved ankle bones.

"This is giving us insight, that isn't guesswork into an area of anatomy that is crucial and critical in how human walking evolved," Berger said of the foot and ankle bones.

The hand, which was described as a human-like at the end of an ape-like arm, had a precision grip that could have aided in making tools, said team member Tracy Kivell, a researcher at Germany's Max Planck Institute.

Its elongated thumb differs from that of apes and allows for it to grasp objects more firmly.

The grapefruit-sized brain of the hominins with a shape close to that of humans and may challenge theories about brain enlargement in human development, they said.

Since the discovery of the site in August 2008, 220 bones have been found of the early hominins, representing at least five individuals. The paper in Science is based on a detailed analysis of two of the individuals.

(Editing by Karolina Tagaris)

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