The field school spent a few days learning about vectors, parasites, and the effect they have on people and the communities in the Turkana Basin. A vector is an animal that actively or passively transmits a pathogen from one organism to another; the most obvious example would be the mosquito, whose diverse family is known [...]
On Thursday, the students traveled to Ol Pejeta Conservancy, the world's largest black rhino sanctuary and home to three of the worlds last remaining northern white rhinos. Ol Pejeta is not only home to these extremely rare rhinos but hundreds of zebra, gazelle, impala, elephants, baboons and even lions! Although not native to Kenya, the students even had the [...]
On Monday and Tuesday, we had the opportunity to learn from Mpala researcher Kimani Ndung'u who specializes in vegetation studies and is currently investigating the effects of termite mounds on the locale-specific environment. He is also a part of a project (www.forestgeo.si.edu/site/mpala) run by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute where they are collecting data for the only savannah plot in their global network. [...]
Welcome to the Turkana Basin Institute Field School blog. We will post weekly updates of students’ adventures and will also discuss what we are all learning along the way. There are 5 modules over the next 10 weeks- Ecology, Geology, Paleontology, Human Evolution, and Archaeology. Please share with others that might be interested in what the [...]
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, 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 [...]
Finally we bring the Spring 2016 TBI Field School to a close. The students have learned and accomplished so much during these 10 weeks. More importantly, they've made friends and memories that will surely last a lifetime. The students have gained a huge breadth of knowledge through many hours of studying, researching, hiking and exploring. [...]
The Early Pleistocene archaeological sites on the west side of Late Turkana are some of the richest areas for early hominin behavioral research in the world. Dozens of sites provide large quantities of stone tools made on a range of different raw materials. Intensive archaeologists studies in this area attempt to reconstruct hominin movements and [...]
We switched our focus in the Archaeology module back to the Stone Age, starting with some hands-on learning about ancient stone tool technology. Understanding stone tools by simply observing archaeological artifacts is a tricky thing - even seeing that these objects are artifacts can be challenging if you don't have years of experience. Many archaeologists have [...]
Profs. Richard and Meave Leakey stopped by TBI Turkwel for a visit with the field school students in between the end of the Paleoanthropology module and the start of Archaeology. The students have come a long way in this field school and were excited to hear from Prof. Leakey about his work and life in [...]
We made it across to the west side of Lake Turkana on March 6th. Having learned about the ecology, paleontology and geology of the basin from an east side perspective, we were excited to learn about what the west side has to offer. Many important paleoanthropological and archaeological discoveries were made in areas on the [...]
Nearing the end of the Geology module, we all set out for an overnight trip to the famous Koobi Fora camp area. The Koobi Fora area is historically significant for human origins research, most notably a hot spot for this discipline since the beginning of Drs. Richard and Meave Leakey's research in the 1960's and 70's. [...]
Part of learning about the geology of the Turkana basin is to visit and examine rock exposures related to archaeological and fossil sites and how to interpret the former landscape of past life. For this next part of the field school, Dr. Feibel told of the geologic history and gave us a tour of the [...]
It might seem impossible, but one of the most important forces of nature changing the landscape in the Turkana Basin is water. The Turkana Basin environment is arid, but even today water moves sediments around, shaping the geology of the area. Many wet and dry cycles have impacted the Turkana Basin – both on annual [...]
So far in the field school we have learned all about the modern local environment and the history of life in the areas surrounding Ileret. But how do we measure this great depth of time? How can we know why and how the environments changed and the effects on the life they sustained over time? [...]
Week two of the Paleontology module was packed with field methods, a special visitor, and lots of work on student projects. We headed back out to Area 8b to learn more about Paleontological field work. After an hour of prospecting for fossil finds, we began a session on field collection methods. All sciences require some [...]
We know that the Earth is between 4-5 billion years old. Its vast life history recorded in the ground. Paleontologists use evidence of past life on Earth from fossils (of plants and animals) to understand the many changes in climates and environments that took place. Professor Mikael Fortelius arrived, and we began our lessons in Paleontology. Prof. [...]
We safely arrived at Ileret, excited to start the second half of the ecology module (don't worry, the rest of the students made it too). Kenya contains a wide variety of environments and habitats within its boundaries. At Mpala, we observed savannah and woodland environments that were very green following good amounts of [...]
On January 30th and 31st the TBI field school students were able to take part in a historically important effort across Kenya. The Great Grevy’s Rally is part of a huge attempt to help stop declining population numbers of the endangered Grevy’s Zebra (Equus grevyi). A mother and infant Grevy's zebra pose for a [...]
After learning about the primary producers (vegetation) and their primary consumers (herbivores), we moved on to discuss those animals higher up the food chain. Carnivores play crucial roles in ecological systems – they keep prey species’ populations in check, allowing for natural regenerating of grazed areas on the landscape. They also cull sick animals to [...]