Field Schools

The students have completed three modules thus far and are now at the beginnings of what many students came to TBI for: Human Evolution. Being home to one of the most extensive collection of fossil hominins, Turkana Basin is the ideal place to learn about human prehistory. Specimens like Paranthropus boisei, Homo rudolfensis, Homo habilis, [...]

We ended the week in the fossil lab, where two of TBI's experienced fossil hunters and preparators, Sale and Apolo, lead us through Plio-Pleistocene fossil archives.

The second week of Paleontology was primarily spent in the field: for four of the six class days this week, we spent the entire day in the field, using what we learned in the previous week to find and identify fossils. Though a majority of the time was spent prospecting, we also learned the methods [...]

This past week in paleontology, the students spent time in lab learning how to identify bones of mammalian species found in the Turkana Basin and understanding differences in functional morphology. This is an important skill set because when we go into the field next week, the students will be able to identify any fossils they find. On Saturday, [...]

We started the Paleontology module from a broad perspective, making sure to cover a brief history of life on earth as well as the history of evolutionary theory, including the work of such academic greats as Mayr, Simpson, and Dobzhansky. With such a solid base under our belts, we can now start learning mammalian anatomy! To [...]

So far in the TBI field school, the students learned about the Ecology of the Turkana Basin, understanding how wildlife has greatly impacted the landscape, how vectors can spread disease, and how different animals interact. They saw zebra, giraffe, gazelle, elephants, baboons, cheetahs and they even got to pet a rhino! They then transitioned to [...]

In just two short weeks, the students have learned more about the geology of the Turkana Basin than any of them may have expected. Little did they know that it would prepare them for their future modules, teaching them to be more aware of their surroundings and exactly what type of environment to look for [...]

Map of the Koobi Fora Region As an educational and celebratory culmination to the geology module, we went on a geology-based camping trip to the Koobi Fora region, particularly close to where Richard Leakey established the Koobi Fora Base Camp in 1968. In the early 1970s Richard and Meave Leakey led a crew [...]

Throughout the history of the Turkana Basin, the dominant hydrographic systems that have fluctuated throughout the basin have been fluvial and lacustrine systems. While this fluctuating environment has been a main theme throughout most of the Geology module, students are now turning to studying current day environments to better understand sediment accumulation in past environments. While [...]

Lake Turkana (Present); Lokochot Lake (3.5 Ma); Lonyumun Lake (4.1-3.95 Ma) The idea that the same natural laws and processes that operate on Earth today have operated in the past is an assumption many geologists use in order to better understand the geologic past. This idea is known as uniformitarianism, also defined as “the [...]

Understanding the basin's fluctuating history provides a more complete picture of what factors may have affected early life in this region. Vital to this research is mapping, the ability to show features on the landscape and to mark areas of interest that can be relocated. Back in the 1970s when some of the first paleoanthropological expeditions began, navigating in the field [...]

One of the final concepts we learned about in ecology was the relationships between organisms.  Specifically, the relationship between intimacy (a measurement of the proximity in which these animals interact) and lethality (how harmful the relationship is). For example, a lion and a zebra would have low intimacy and high lethality, because they spend very [...]

On Tuesday, the field school explored near the edge of Sibiloi National Park to learn more about adaptive strategies of vegetation in such an arid environment. In particular, we focused on the desert rose, Adenium obesum, a rather amazing tree. The desert rose is an incredibly slow growing tree, growing an average of 1 millimeter [...]

While at Mpala, Dr. Martins took the students out into the field to learn about the different species of plants surrounding the area. Similar to the overall theme that Kimani introduced, Dr. Martins had the students work on a project that stressed the differences of vegetation inside and outside of the compound. The students conducted [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]