Paivaa/hello! Welcome to another installment of TBI’s field school blog! This weeks blog post is written by me, Onni Purhonen. I’m a biology student from the University of Helsinki in Finland, currently in my second year of studies and specializing in ecology and evolutionary biology. The current field school-module on ecology with Dr. Dino J. [...]
Personal journal excerpt: It is Tuesday evening; I am relaxing in Mpala research center reminiscing a productive day. I am inspired to write a short account of the ant-acacia relationship we learned earlier today: Picture an ant, One ferocious and alert, She tends and serves, To protect her reserves! Picture another ant, One [...]
Jambo! Welcome to the TBI Origins Field School blog for Fall 2022! My name is Medina Lubisia, the Resident Academic Director for the Fall Field School. I will be accompanying students throughout the field school as they undertake five modules that will be credited for their Fall semester. The students arrived safely in Nairobi and [...]
Hello! We are the DART - OPTiK team, a collaboration of researchers from the University of Edinburgh, STFC UKRI, Technical University of Kenya and the Turkana Basin Institute. We will be working at the TBI base in Ileret for the next couple of months to set up a portable telescope which will then take observations [...]
This July, Kevin Hatala (Chatham University), Neil Roach (Harvard University) and Louise Leakey (Stony Brook University) led a TBI team unearthing a new early Pleistocene footprint site at Koobi Fora. The first tracks were discovered last year by Louise’s team at the bottom of an important skeletal fossil excavation. This year’s excavation uncovered a large [...]
This past weekend we visited the West Turkana Archaeological Project(WTAP) campsite at Lomekwi and had the opportunity to set up and test a charcoal evaporative cooler and a hanging evaporative cooler. The field research camps have limited access to electricity and cold storage for fruits and vegetables, so evaporative cooling is a potential solution to [...]
Mountains south of Lokichar. These rocks form the core of a Neoproterozoic island arc. Turkana and the East African Rift. The ‘cradle of humanity’. But what is this cradle actually made of? And why is The Rift where it is anyway? The Rift is such an important feature for nurturing primates and [...]
Hello! We are Ava and Christine, from MIT D-Lab, and this summer we are working with the Turkana Basin Institute and our PI, Dr. Eric Verploegen, to research evaporative cooling as a means of post harvest fruit and vegetable storage. In regions of the world where access to food preservation methods is limited, up [...]
We recently feted three candidates from TBI’s Ileret scholarship program that sponsored students from the Daasanach community. They are Rahma Ahmed Said, Joseph Arcoy Hirbnle and James Loki Abucha. Their faces are presently unmistakable in the village, having produced exceptional performance in KCSE 2021. Such results have not been seen at the remote location [...]
TBI has been honored to host Dr. Deborah Lindell of Case Western Reserve University for the last 8 months during her Fulbright Fellowship in Turkana. Dr. Lindell has been working on developing a Nursing BSN program at the Turkana University College (TUC), as well as teaching TUC students, conducting research into nursing in Turkana county [...]
March 22nd is World Water Day and this year the international focus is on groundwater. This is a precious resource whose importance is increasing as the impacts of climate change become more significant. We feel this acutely in TBI Ileret where groundwater is critical to our operations. In 2021, we were able to decarbonize [...]
Paleontologist and National Geographic Explorer Isaiah Nengo, associate Director of the Turkana Basin Institute and Director for Research and Science at the Turkana Basin Institute passed away on 23 January at the age of 60. He was passionately dedicated to the study of Miocene hominids in Turkana, Kenya and his fieldwork led to the [...]
2021 was an exciting year for sustainability at TBI. We made great strides towards improving our environmental sustainability by increasing investments in clean energy. Over all, we installed over 50 kWp of solar panels, which can generate a cumulative 330 kW of power daily and we installed over 100 kWh of battery storage. This [...]
James Alkerech was a herder who spent most of his time taking care of his father’s livestock. Life in Fora, located in the remote area of Ileret Ward, has livestock keeping as the primary economic activity. This area is also characterized by frequent conflict over grazing land. In 2018, after a particularly fierce exchange, [...]
World-renowned paleoanthropologist and conservationist Richard E. Leakey, chair of the Turkana Basin Institute (TBI) and a professor in the Stony Brook University Department of Anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences died January 2 at the age of 77. Leakey devoted the majority of his life to research on human origins, conservation of [...]
On Sunday 2nd January, we lost a true warrior, an individual so large in presence that he left a void that can never be filled. He has been described as iconic, and a force of nature, but to us he was Richard, Dad, and Babu. As a family, we are enormously grateful for the [...]
Martin Kirinya and Emmanuel Aipa showcase fossils in the TBI booth at the Tobong'u Lore Festival 2021 The Tobong’u Lore cultural festival is an annual event hosted by the Turkana County Government in order to promote peace, indigenous culture and tourism within the region. This brings together local and international groups lending [...]
The excitement that Alex Chege had upon securing the Baldwin Fellowship has its roots in his journey. Connecting the dots from when he was young, it isn't by chance that he is now undertaking the Ecology and Evolution PhD Program at Stony Brook University under the mentorship of Dr. Catherine Markham and Dr. Richard [...]
Winfred Wambui Mbogo is a Kenyan lady who is very passionate about human evolution. Her journey began in 2010 when she enrolled at the University of Nairobi to pursue a Bachelor of Arts degree in Anthropology. She realized that anthropology was misconceived in Kenya and rarely did students get encouraged to pursue the course. [...]
Preparators from the National Museums of Kenya at the Ileret research facility of the Turkana Basin Institute, starting manual preparation and supplementing the field consolidation (chemical hardening) of Loxodonta adaurora cranium KNM-ER 63642. From left to right: Cliff Onyango, Robert Moru and Christopher Kiarie. Image credit: Steve Jabo, Smithsonian Institution A remarkably well-preserved [...]