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 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,…

Canadians appear to have a blind spot when it comes to distracted driving — they are convinced everyone else is guilty of using their smartphone while behind the wheel, but when they themselves do it, it doesn’t count. It’s a deadly type of denial. Distracted driving fatalities have surpassed those caused by impaired driving in some…

A rare poisonous fish was found earlier this month washed up on the shore near the Vancouver Island community of Jordan River, about 70 km west of Victoria.  The fish, a spotted porcupine fish, has been preserved as part of the Royal B.C. Museum’s collection.  Gavin Hanke, the curator of vertebrate zoology, said as soon as…

In a glimpse of the future, an entire sports event has been run on horse manure. The world’s governing equestrian body on Monday praised a climate-friendly scheme by a Finnish equestrian event to generate all its electricity needs from horse manure, saying the initiative paves way in cutting reliance on fossil fuels in horse sports.…

The Ontario Science Centre is warning newsletter subscribers of a data breach in which someone made a copy of emails and names without authorization. In a notice sent to subscribers Monday, the science centre said the breach affects subscribers for e-newsletters, as well as participants in camp programs, birthday parties and invitations for events like…

A young Dutch inventor is widening his effort to clean up floating plastic from the Pacific Ocean by moving into rivers, too, using a new floating device to catch garbage before it reaches the seas. The 25-year-old university dropout Boyan Slat founded The Ocean Cleanup to develop and deploy a system he invented when he…