The Spring 2015 Origins Field School students are now settled in at the Turkana Basin Institute and have been busy with the Ecology Module for the past few days. One of our first lessons has been looking at the vegetation. In this arid region, plants are essential for animals, including livestock, which is what supports [...]
The Spring 2015 TBI Origins Field School students have been on four-day trip to Mpala Ranch located on the Laikipia plateau north of Mt Kenya. We have had an amazing safari so far - learning about and encountering many different species of plants and animals, exploring different habitats, climbing small rocky hills, watching birds and [...]
The Spring 2015 Turkana Basin Institute Origins Field School has begun! Students arrived in Kenya and travelled to Mpala Ranch where we are staying at the Mpala Research Centre. Spring 2015 Origins Field School Students exploring the ecology of the African Savannah! On the way up here we spent some time in Nanyuki, [...]
The Turkana Basin Institute Fall 2014 Field School ended last Sunday. As part of this we held a graduation ceremony where students were presented by Dr Leakey to travelled to TBI to congratulate the students. Dr Leakey and Dr. Sonia Harmand, the Archaeology Professor talk to students about their time at TBI [...]
The TBI Fall 2014 Field School students visited a livestock boma (enclosure) this past week to learn more about goats, grazing and the ecology of livestock in this arid environment. Goats are the main form of livestock kept in this part of the world and an important part of the local economy and culture. [...]
The TBI Field School students visited the Kerio Delta a few days ago to get a first glimpse of the complex freshwater ecology and dynamics that affect the deltas of Lake Turkana. We were hosted by a group of local fishermen whose boats we used to travel into the mouth of the Kerio Delta. [...]
The Turkana Basin Institute's Origins Field School started off this week with the students exploring the African Savannah and meeting some of the amazing creatures that call this ecosystem home. We were very lucky to spend three days at Mpala Ranch in Laikipia where we had some incredible sightings of wildlife, while learning about the [...]
The Turkana Basin Institute's Fall 2014 Origins Field School has begun. Students arrived in Kenya on the 4th and travelled up to Mpala Ranch yesterday. It was a wet, rainy day - but we did get to see some amazing wildlife on the way to the campsite, including giraffe and elephant. A Reticulated Giraffe [...]
The twelfth annual Stony Brook Human Evolution Workshop was held at the Turkana Basin Institute’s (TBI) Turkwel research facility, between August 5-9th, 2014. The workshop was organized to mark the 50th Anniversary of the publication by Louis Leakey, Phillip Tobias and John Napier of the paper that established Homo habilis as a taxon (Leakey, L. S. [...]
The Spring 2014 Field School Vertebrate Paleontology module began this week with Prof. Mikael Fortelius who travelled to Turkana from Finland. Students are being introduced to the diversity and evolution of vertebrates in the Turkana Basin as well as the basic methods involved in searching for, documenting and collecting fossils in the field. This morning [...]
The Turkana ecosystem is home to a wide range of species, including many different kinds of insects. One of the challenges of understanding biodiversity is the fact that many species have not yet been classified, and are in general poorly known or studied. This is true for most of the remote, tropical areas of the [...]
The Spring 2014 Turkana Basin Institute Field School has begun! TBI Spring 2014 Field School Students! We started our journey of discovery at Lake Elementeita in the Great Rift Valley where we took an evening walk along the lakeshore. We got to see how incredibly high the lakes are - as lots of [...]
We are watching a total solar eclipse at TBI right now - here are a couple of photos... more soon Students watching the TOTAL solar eclipse The eclipse begins!
Today the Field School students spent the day in the field looking for fossils in three different sites: Lothodok, the edge of the Kalodir deposits and Maurorot. All these sites are north of TBI and represent different slices of time that have been preserved in the fossil record. Prof Boyer explains the importance of [...]
The Field School students visited different deposits in the Napedet Hills south of TBI this morning to look for fossils. This was to introduce the students to fieldwork and how fossils are located in the field, then how they get documented. We started at a Pleistocene Site The first fossil discovery of the [...]
The Turkana Basin Field School proceeds apace. Today the palaeontology module began with Prof Doug Boyer of Duke University who arrived at TBI yesterday. Prof Doug Boyer of Duke University One of the first exercises was putting the earth's history and timeline into perspective. It all started with a bang a [...]
One of the high points of the TBI Field School is the trip to Central Island. We visited the island at the end of the ecology module just over a week ago. Central Island is a unique and stunning volcanic island in the very middle of Lake Turkana. Rising out of the blue-green waters, it [...]
As part of the Ecology Module we have been exploring the Turkwel River next to the Turkana Basin Institute. Learning about river life by sampling using sieves This involved looking at aquatic life and learning about the food web in the river, as well as that of Lake Turkana. It was refreshing to [...]
A major ecological issue that the students have been learning about is that of invasive species. As humans have moved about the planet and modified the environments, one of the impacts we have had is through introducing plants and animals to habitats where they did not occur naturally and evolve with other species. One of [...]
One of the most fascinating aspects of life around TBI is how different organisms cope with the heat and drought. The main mammal herbivores in this region are goats. Goats are browsers that are very efficient at consuming vegetation. Due to many years of overgrazing, large areas of northern Kenya are referred to as 'goated' [...]