A major theme in this week’s Geology lectures has been sedimentology and river systems. For their lab practical, the students collected and analyzed sediment samples from different sites of the Turkwel River. By applying a depositional model, the students hypothesized about the river’s flow history. This semester’s first overnight field excursion was to Lothagam. The [...]
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 [...]
The first week of the Geology module wrapped up with a field excursion to the Lothidok Range. Some outcrops at Lothidok expose Oligocene and Miocene strata and have in the past yielded fossils that are important to understanding primate evolution. Dr. Lepre led the students day hiking across a portion of Lothidok while they surveyed [...]
The Geology module of the Fall 2013 Field School is underway and the students are enthusiastically hard at work. Dr. Chris Lepre of Rutgers University is leading the class through the geologic events that have shaped East Africa and by extension our own evolution. Class discussions have included geologic time, radioisotopes, stratigraphy, hydrology, tectonics and [...]
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' [...]
The Turkana Basin Field School for Fall 2013 has begun! The students made their long journey to Kenya from New York and set off on a short safari into the Great Rift Valley to Lake Elementeita, Lake Nakuru and Lake Naivasha. We started at Lake Elementeita in the Rift Valley where we went for a [...]
In Kenya, rain is a blessing. It is something to celebrate if you have rain on your wedding day. If rain is a blessing, then nature wanted to shower the last few days at the Turkana Basin Institute with signs that this was a blessed experience. As Dr. Matt Skinner from University College [...]
The Pleistocene is sometimes called the Ice Age, but ice was as rare 2 million years ago as it is today in the Turkana Basin. Instead the glaciers in the north caused the deserts and arid grasslands to expand as the ice advanced and the expansion of the forests when the ice retreated. Our early [...]
When scientists first set out to study human origins, the Victorian armchair theorists figured it was our big brains that set us apart from the animal kingdom. They expected the fossils of our earliest ancestors to have voluminous noggins but not be built for walking. This walking business would emerge after we realized how useful [...]
Human ancestors. This is why the Turkana Basin is on the paleontological map. Sure it preserves an intact record of the grassland ecosystem taking over East Africa and the immigration and local radiation of bizarre and wonderful plants and animals, but it’s the human story that draws us to Turkana. It’s not an inexplicable bias. [...]
As part of the TBI Field School students get to work on new fossil material. Well, maybe not “new” in the normal sense of that word, but they get to work with material that no one else has laid hands on or thought about because it just came out of the ground a few days [...]
Fossils usually aren’t very pretty when they come out of the ground. They’re usually caked in sediment or broken into tiny pieces that need to be reassembled. After they’ve been cleaned and put back together, the fossil is ready for interpretation, description, and display. Easier said than done. The process of getting a [...]
African mammals started out weird. When the dinosaurs bowed out sixty-five million years ago after a rough season with a few Indian volcanoes and a rough weekend with an asteroid near Cancun, Africa was already a continent adrift. Much like the modern island continent of Australia, home to unique mammalian lineages like kangaroos, Tasmanian devils, [...]
The Turkana Basin if famous for preserving the fossilized remains of our bipedal ancestors. But, there are more than fossil hominins in the rocks piled up around Lake Turkana. The remains of horses, pigs, fish, hyaenas, and hippos (lots of hippos) also tumble from the rock, providing the ecological and environmental context for the evolution [...]
It’s the little things that will make you worry when you sign up for something like the Turkana Basin Field School. Most of this blog has documented the stuff that might be expected. You sign up for a semester studying human evolution in Kenya and you hike through the desert, see a few zebra, pet [...]
A barren, rolling landscape and a ring of stones. Evidence of mysterious ritual feasts and astrological signs. The true purpose of the site long forgotten. It’s an image that conjures up ancient Celtic druids on the English heath, but ring sites aren’t unique to the early cultures of the English Isles. The Turkana Basin has [...]
The stereotypical image of the exploratory archaeologist doesn’t include a bundle of flags and a GPS. At least not for me. Maybe it includes a whip and a few Nazi’s to fight, but a less fanciful image includes a trowel, a sieve and an exotic backdrop. Now that we had made some pretty significant discoveries [...]
The point of a field school is not to go to sites where the action has politely resolved itself and examine the leavings of more experienced excavators who have sorted out the story preserved underfoot. That’s what museums are for. Or maybe really well illustrated textbooks. For the Archaeology module, Dr. Alison Brooks of George [...]