Paleontology

The Island Africa Project is a consortium of American and African vertebrate paleontologists and geologists working together to understand significant evolutionary events of the Late Cretaceous and Paleogene isolation, including the extinction of the dinosaurs and the origin and diversification of placental mammals. At present, the vertebrate fossil record of Africa during this critical interval is very poorly understood, particularly between about 95 and 55 million years ago. Island Africa scientists have already demonstrated great promise to fill in this gap through work in the Turkana Basin.

In addition, Tab Rasmussen’s (Washington University in St. Louis) work on Oligocene sites on the West side of Lake Turkana has resulted in a major collection of fossil mammals that extends the fossil record for primates in the Turkana Basin to the early and middle Oligocene and will greatly enrich our understanding of this time period which has primarily been informed until now by the rich, but geographically restricted, collections from the Fayum in Egypt.

On the East side of the Lake, just south of the Ethiopian border, Ellen Miller (Wake Forest University) is recovering more fossil evidence of early apes and the mammals associated with them through field exploration at the early Miocene site at Buluk using the facility at TBIIleret.

In the middle Miocene, James Rossie (Stony Brook University) is working out of the TBI Turkwel facility on the early middle Miocene sites at Losidok and Kalodirr on the west side of Lake Turkana with the goal to recover more complete remains of early great apes and the mammals associated with them.

Kyalo Manthi (NMK and TBI) works on Pliocene mammals from the west side of Lake Turkana with a special emphasis on the fauna at Kanapoi and seeks to recover early hominid fossils as well as the associated mammalian fauna.

Francis Kirera (TBI, NMK and Ross University) leads exploration efforts on the east side of Lake Turkana to find new sites from the late Pliocene and early Pliocene.

There is currently a 40M year-long gap in Africa’s vertebrate fossil record, between about 96 and 56 million years ago–an interval during which Africa became isolated from other continents, non-avian dinosaurs went extinct, and placental mammals first arose. At present there are no records of mammals, and only a few fragmentary remains of dinosaurs, from this massive lacuna in Africa’s fossil record, and as a result scientists know nothing about what happened to these groups during this pivotal interval in African prehistory. Paleontological reconnaissance in Kenya in 2004 led to the discovery of crocodilian and turtle fossils at various sites on the northwest side of Lake Turkana, including good collections of dinosaur fossils discovered in the Lubur Hills, West Turkana. Subsequent analysis of this fauna suggests that it is the youngest diverse terrestrial vertebrate fauna from the Late Cretaceous from Africa. This offers great promise for the discovery of fossils immediately before and after the Cretaceous-Tertiary (KT) boundary at 65M years ago when a massive meteorite struck the earth leading to the fifth extinction that wiped out non-Avian dinosaurs and paved the way for the Age of Mammals.

During the summer of 2008, Turkana Basin Institute scientists Erik Seiffert and Joe Sertich (both from Stony Brook University) joined scientists from the National Museums of Kenya for a return trip to the Turkana Basin to search for more complete fossils from known sites, and to explore for new fossil localities in a series of sediments exposed west of Lake Turkana that are believed to be of Late Cretaceous or early Paleogene age. Fossils from these sites will be critical for testing a number of outstanding hypotheses related to: 1) the pattern and timing of fragmentation of the southern supercontinent (Gondwana); 2) the nature of non-avian dinosaur evolution in Africa prior to the K-T mass extinction; and 3) the nature of mammalian evolution in the Late Cretaceous of Africa.