Science News Roundup: Humankind's ancestral 'homeland' pinpointed in Botswana

Following is a summary of current science news briefs.

Humankind's ancestral 'homeland' pinpointed in Botswana

A large ancient wetlands region spanning northern Botswana - once teeming with life but now dominated by desert and salt flats - may represent the ancestral homeland of all of the 7.7 billion people on Earth today, researchers said on Monday. Their study, guided by maternal DNA data from more than 1,200 people indigenous to southern Africa, proposed a central role for this region in the early history of humankind starting 200,000 years ago, nurturing our species for 70,000 years before climate changes paved the way for the first migrations.

Secretive military spaceplane lands in Florida after a record-long orbital flight

The Pentagon's secretive X-37B spaceplane landed in Florida on Sunday after a record-long orbital flight lasting more than two years, the U.S. Air Force said, capping the latest test mission for an array of military technologies. The unpiloted X-37B, built by Boeing Co., touched down on an airstrip at NASA's Kennedy Space Center at 3:51 a.m. ET after spending 780 days orbiting Earth as the Air Force's fifth flight mission under the Orbital Test Vehicle program, the Air Force said.

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