African Wild Dogs at Mpala Research Centre
Our Origins Field School students observe a pack of African wild dogs at Mpala Research Centre in the Laikipia region of central Kenya.
Stony Brook professor publishes stone tool book
Stony Brook University professor John J. Shea recently published a new work through Cambridge University Press entitled Stone Tools in Human Evolution: Behavioral Differences among Technological Primates. From the publisher's description: In Stone Tools in Human Evolution, John J. Shea argues that over the last three million years hominins' technological strategies shifted from occasional tool use, [...]
TBI hosts thirteenth HEW: Rethinking Tool-making
The Turkana Basin Institute will host the thirteenth workshop of the Stony Brook/TBI Human Evolution Workshop series at its Turkwel campus from August 2 - 6. Entitled Rethinking Tool-making, the workshop is organized by archaeologists Drs. Sonia Harmand and Hélène Roche. The 2015 discovery of the earliest-known stone tools at Lomekwi 3 in West Turkana [...]
Meave Leakey awarded National Geographic’s Hubbard Medal
Meave Leakey, Director of Field Research at TBI and research professor at Stony Brook University’s Department of Anthropology, received the 2016 Hubbard Medal, named for the first president of the National Geographic Society, Gardiner Greene Hubbard, often called National Geographic’s highest honor. The award is given for lifetime achievement in areas of research, discovery, and exploration. Meave Leakey in [...]
Evidence of a prehistoric massacre extends the history of warfare
Skeletal remains of a group of foragers massacred around 10,000 years ago, on the shores of a lagoon in what is now southwestern Turkana, is unique evidence of a violent encounter between clashing groups of ancient hunter-gatherers, and suggests the “presence of warfare” in late Stone Age foraging societies. The fossilised bones of a group [...]
In conversation with Richard Leakey
Journalist and presenter Zeinab Badawi (BBC) will be conversing with Richard Leakey as he reflects on his life's work at the Royal Society in London next Wednesday, October 21 at 6:30 PM London time (1:30 PM EST). Leakey's career over the past fifty years has spanned paleoanthropology, wildlife conservation and campaigning for political justice. This [...]
New website enables online fossil hunting
The Turkana Basin Institute, in collaboration with the University of Bradford, has set up a web site fossilfinder.org, recruiting an army of ‘citizen scientists’ to help discover fossils and other ancient artefacts using the unique online platform “Zooniverse”. fOssilfinder.org is a pioneering project, funded in part by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, enabling amateur [...]
Oldest Stone Artifacts Found in Kenya’s Turkana Basin
The West Turkana Archaeological Project team has found the earliest known stone artifacts, dating to 3.3 million years ago. The discovery pushes back the beginning of the archaeological record by 700,000 years, or by over a quarter of humanity's previously-known material cultural history.