The Turkana Basin Institute is pleased to announce it has awarded two new graduate fellowships. Natasha Gownaris is a second year doctoral student at the Stony Brook University School of Marine and Atmospheric Science's Institute for Ocean Conservation Science. She is interested in how planned hydroelectric development and climate change might impact the fisheries of Lake Turkana and the [...]
Celebrating decades of groundbreaking exploration in East Africa, these renowned paleoanthropologists will make this joint appearance to discuss the overwhelming evidence for evolution in the hominid fossil record and why understanding our evolutionary history is so important. Known for such landmark discoveries as "Lucy" (Johanson) and "Turkana Boy" (Leakey), the work of these [...]
Professor John Shea presents evidence that early human behavior was no less complex than that of living humans. Stone points dating to at least 104,000 years ago from Omo Kibish, Ethiopia. These points, shaped by pressure-flaking and likely used as projectile points are more than 65,000 years older than the oldest similar artifacts from the [...]
Another update from Ileret with images and text by Fraser Smith. This is the progress report on the water pipeline and the generator house that is being built near the borehole. We had decided it best to fill the ditch once we had pumped water through the pipe and checked for leaks. In [...]
Due to the remoteness of Ileret and the expense of transporting building materials is very costly. Therefore new techniques are to be employed in the buildings on this side of the lake to try to reduce costs. One approach is to use concrete waffles that are made from a mould for the roofing of the [...]
I have a few recent images of the large laboratory that is under construction at Turkwel. The basement which will be used as storage area, is now complete and the large slab has mostly been laid. The wall on the ground floor will be the constructed next. I have a few recent images of the [...]
The welding the 7m lengths of pipe into 351m rolls was completed last week. Now the laying of the pipes along the 8 km trench has begun. The rolls of pipe were transported to the trench and were be fed down the pipeline. The final welding together of the 351m pipe lengths is then done [...]
The ninth annual Stony Brook Human Evolution Workshop, “Our ancestors’ ancestors: the Miocene roots of the hominin tree” took place in Kenya, August 17 – 21, 2010. The ninth annual Stony Brook Human Evolution Workshop, “Our ancestors’ ancestors: the Miocene roots of the hominin tree” took place in Kenya, August 17 – 21, 2010. Participants [...]