Scott Bjelland | Turkana Basin Institute

TBI joins CONFMAP to improve public prehistory education in Kenya

The Turkana Basin Institute has joined the project Consolidating the Future through Mastering the Deep Past (CONFMAP), led by archaeologist Sonia Harmand of Stony Brook University and TBI. The project is funded by the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, and aims to improve access to paleosciences for marginalized populations while raising awareness in Kenyan of the value of the prehistoric archaeological heritage of Turkana County in northern Kenya.

By Scott Bjelland|2021-12-29T11:19:37+03:00May 14th, 2021|Featured, General|Comments Off

Local knowledge informs conservation efforts in Sibiloi National Park

A new study highlights the dramatic biodiversity loss of carnivores in the Turkana Basin's Sibiloi National Park by examining both ecological sampling methods and observations of wildlife by local pastoralists. Sibiloi National Park is located on the north-eastern shore of Lake Turkana and is well known for its paleontological record of human evolution. Historically, Sibiloi [...]

By Scott Bjelland|2021-01-15T08:38:23+03:00January 15th, 2021|General|Comments Off

Local youth outreach through football

TBI has been organizing a number of football tournaments in Ileret to keep the youth engaged and active during this long school hiatus due to COVID-19. With schools closed indefinitely, students were sent back to their villages with little opportunity for engagement and activity, leaving them vulnerable to early marriages, teenage pregnancies, and drug [...]

By Scott Bjelland|2021-12-29T11:21:35+03:00November 23rd, 2020|Featured, General, Local Community Outreach|Comments Off

TBI Former Director Lawrence Martin discusses importance of Turkana Basin

By Scott Bjelland|2025-03-20T08:35:57+03:00November 4th, 2020|Media, Video|Comments Off

Turkana Miocene Project explores climate change impact on evolution

The NSF Frontier Research in Earth Sciences program (FRES) has funded the Turkana Miocene Project proposal to the tune of ~$2.7 million. The grant will fund research over 4 years to better understand how climate change and tectonics interacted to shape the evolution of the environment in which the ancestors of humans and our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangs emerged in Africa.

By Scott Bjelland|2021-05-14T10:04:08+03:00October 1st, 2020|Featured|Comments Off

Smithsonian Magazine names decade’s biggest discoveries in human evolution

Smithsonian Magazine has named the "Decade’s Biggest Discoveries in Human Evolution." Fourth on the list is the discovery in 2011 of the world's oldest stone tools, made by a team of archeologists led by Sonia Harmand and Jason Lewis of Stony Brook University: "When you think of technology today, you might picture computers, smartphones, and [...]

By Scott Bjelland|2020-05-01T10:46:09+03:00May 1st, 2020|Featured|Comments Off

Collaborating with the local Daasanach community

Photo credit: Miquel Torrents-Ticó. Local ecological knowledge, stemming from generations of human-wildlife interactions, is becoming an increasingly more significant source of important data for wildlife biologists. […]

By Scott Bjelland|2020-02-25T14:07:23+03:00February 25th, 2020|Media, Photos|Comments Off

Did the common ancestor of humans and great apes evolve in Africa or Eurasia?

It is known based on DNA analysis that chimpanzees are the closest living relatives to humans, the two together are closest to gorillas, then three together to orangs. Furthermore, humans, the great apes (chimpanzee, gorillas, and orangs) together with the lesser apes (gibbons and siamangs) belong to the superfamily named Hominoidea. The closest living [...]

By Scott Bjelland|2019-03-06T05:38:58+03:00March 6th, 2019|Discovery, Featured, Research|Comments Off

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