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 [...]
Where people go, they leave their trash. Since the Turkana Basin has been home to people for millions of years, there’s a lot of trash for archaeologists to pick up. The classic image of archaeology is the studious excavator sweating with trowel in hand in a meter-by-meter square trying to figure out how a piece [...]
The Turkana Basin Field school has switched timescales again. In ecology we were learning about the rapid impact modern humans are having on our environment, particularly in the Turkana Basin. In Geology we stepped way back to take a longer view of the basin’s evolution, starting with the Cretaceous rocks of the Basin (about 70 [...]
Lothagam was too expansive, too important, and just too beautiful to be limited to a one-day visit or one blog post. As usual, the students rose with the dawn, the red rocks of Lothagam radiant with scarlet light. Quickly the nets and bedrolls were packed away, boots were laced, sunscreen applied, and we [...]
Lothagam isn’t a name that comes up very often in Physical Anthropology classes. It wasn’t a name a lot of the students on the field school knew before they came out to TBI. But over the last few weeks there was a building drumbeat: Lothagam: the lonely hill on a distant horizon. Lothagam: the oldest [...]
Geology is often viewed as the study of the past, of what happened to get the planet to this point. But many geologists are equally interested in the future, using information collected on climatic, tectonic, and biological change to figure out where the planet is headed. Dr. Bob Raynolds, research associate Denver Museum of Nature [...]
The shifting scale of geological inquiry can give you spatial and temporal whiplash. You go from scrutinizing a tiny quartz crystal to trying to sort out the arrival of a massive inland sea or go from contemplating a single layer of ash that took a few minutes to fall to an entire formation that took [...]
Geology is the foundation science. Pun intended. It is the study of how everything we can lay hands on came to be. Geology draws from every investigative discipline – physics, chemistry, biology, anthropology and a lot more ologies – to examine the wheres, whens, and whys of mountains, water, and us. But before a geologist [...]
A fish farm at TBI-turkwel been designed as a pilot project to understand the feasibility of aquaculture in the Turkana Basin.
At TBI-Turkwel we've begun to convert locally sourced biomass into energy to run our facility.
One of the most challenging and interesting questions that has been pondered by scientists through the ages, from Aristotle to Darwin, through to the present day is where, when and how did we, humans, come about? This is a BIG question that perhaps almost everyone has asked at some point in our lives. [...]
Stony Brook University's Dr. Lawrence Martin has agreed to serve, on a full-time basis, as Director of the Turkana Basin Institute. Martin has been at the heart of TBI activities since its creation in 2005, and has worked closely with Richard Leakey on fundraising, developing a field school, developing a self-sustaining business plan for TBI [...]
Dr. Louise Leakey (TBI, Stony Brook University) and 3D software company Autodesk have teamed up with the National Museums of Kenya to create an ongoing interactive showcase famous fossil discoveries from the Turkana Basin in virtual 3D. Newley launched, AfricanFossils.org enables visitors to explore a virtual "lab" filled with numerous famous fossil finds which can [...]
University of Utah scientists used chemical isotopes in ancient soil to measure prehistoric tree cover – in effect, shade – and found that grassy, tree-dotted savannas prevailed at most East African sites where human ancestors and their ape relatives evolved during the past 6 million years.
Scientists from around the world are arriving at TBI's Turkwel research facility in northern Kenya for the tenth annual Stony Brook University Human Evolution Workshop, held August 2-6. The workshop, entitled “Geological History of the Turkana Basin,” will cover topics such as the plate tectonic setting of the Turkana Basin, relation of the Turkana Depression [...]
The Tenth annual SBU Human Evolution workshop, entitled "Geological History of the Turkana Basin" will be held from August 2-6, 2011 at TBI's Turkwel research facility in Kenya.