A landmark new report was launched today by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). The Assessment Report on the Interlinkages Among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health – known as the Nexus Report - offers decision-makers around the world the most ambitious scientific assessment ever undertaken of the complex interconnections between biodiversity, water, food, health and climate change and explores more than 60 specific response options to maximize co-benefits across the five ‘nexus elements’ -- a new science in the making.

Physicists from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) have developed an innovative computing system using laser beams and everyday display technology, marking a significant leap forward in the quest for more powerful quantum computing solutions.

After major refurbishments, the old Johannesburg Planetarium has been transformed into the state-of-the-art Wits Anglo American Digital Dome.

In a remarkable journey back to the Jurassic Era, scientists have used cutting-edge technology to uncover secrets about Orthosuchus stormbergi, a small, early ancestor of today’s crocodiles. Unlike its modern relatives, which are renowned for their massive size and aquatic prowess, this tiny croc offers unique insights into the evolution of its lineage. Standing out for its slow growth and diminutive adult size, Orthosuchus paints a fascinating picture of ancient ecosystems and crocodilian history.

Scientists from South Africa and Brazil have provided empirical evidence that pollen grains of rival plants may compete with one another for space on pollinators, thus influencing whose pollen is going to make it to the next flower – or not.

In an article published in The American Naturalist this week, they argue that because plants can manipulate where and how much pollen is placed on the bodies of pollinators, plants may have developed strategies that are similar to sperm manipulation in animals.

A 200 year old painting in a cave on the La Belle France farm in the Free State province of South Africa, may be the world's oldest known piece of paleo-art depicting an extinct mammal-like reptile called a dicynodont, predating the creature's official scientific discovery by at least a decade.

Professor Julien Benoit, a palaeontologist at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University), has reinterpreted this mysterious rock art, that has previously been misidentified as a walrus-like creature or even a surviving sabre-toothed cat. He identified the animal in the image as a Dicynodont, that lived between 265 and 200 million years ago.