During the TBI field school, it is important to take time off from studying and have a bit of leisure time. When the students are constantly working, may it be preparing for an exam or putting together a presentation, it is sometimes hard to stop and take a break. However, we always make sure the students [...]
Following our first two days of class in the lab, we spent the day in the field Wednesday visiting the site of an important hominin discovery. In an attempt to beat the heat, we boarded the lorry at 7 a.m. to get an early start, arriving in Area 10 by 7:45. Sale and Apolo lead [...]
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 [...]