The Field School is not all work; there is also some time to relax. On Sunday students went to Eliye Springs on the sandy shores of Lake Turkana. This little “resort” features a small restaurant with fabulous food and cold sodas (special treat!). Students relaxed in the shade under umbrellas and cooled off in the [...]
Students went on a field trip to Kalodir, a site where with exposed sediments that are over 17 million years old. After chipping away sediments students recovered impressions of leaves and other plant parts. Impressions occur when, let’s say a leaf, drifts to the lake bottom where it is covered with fine sediments such as [...]
Time is flying – the forth module kicked off Monday. Students are learning about the evolution of vertebrates (animals with a backbone) and how to identify animal fossils. Students are also learning about the evolution of plants and how to identify plant fossils. Knowing about what types of plants and animals were present at any [...]
This Sunday students went to visit a local school. Of course, Turkana students have off on Sundays too, but many of the 176 children and teachers came to welcome the TBI Field School students. TBI donated around 20 young trees that we all planted together around the school yard. After that, students played some soccer [...]
This week students have been learning about our more recent ancestors that lived over the past 2 million years. At around 1.8 million years there were six or more different species of early human-like species in Africa, and now there is only one left - us, Homo sapiens. Students not only paid close attention to [...]
Yesterday students finally got to look at their fossils in more detail. With the help of instructor Fred Grine and Meave Leakey, students did their best to identify, and piece together, the often very small bone fragments. Finds ranged from mammal bones to crocodile teeth and turtle shells. [...]
On Saturday morning, students went on a short walk to a fossil site just outside TBI. Here, Dr. Meave Leakey taught three different methods of locating fossils. The students had great fun and only reluctantly left for lunch after searching for fossils for over three hours! The ground was littered with fossils, and many, many [...]
Students had a fun and successful day hunting for fossils. The first stop was the site called Losodok - a landscape of rolling hills and - lucky for us - lots of wind. Temperatures can easily sore above 100 F or 40 C during the day. Losodok dates to over 15 million years ago and [...]