Independent discoveries from the fossils of Turkana
As part of the TBI Field School students get to work on new fossil material. Well, maybe not “new” in the normal sense of [...]
Getting prepared to prep
Fossils usually aren’t very pretty when they come out of the ground. They’re usually caked in sediment or broken into tiny pieces that need [...]
Movin’ through the Miocene
African mammals started out weird. When the dinosaurs bowed out sixty-five million years ago after a rough season with a few Indian volcanoes and [...]
Paleontology off to a smashing start
The Turkana Basin if famous for preserving the fossilized remains of our bipedal ancestors. But, there are more than fossil hominins in the rocks [...]
Life and leisure at TBI
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 [...]
Pillars of Truth(s) at Kalokol
A barren, rolling landscape and a ring of stones. Evidence of mysterious ritual feasts and astrological signs. The true purpose of the site long [...]
Getting to the bottom of Kangatotha
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 [...]
Survey and discovery at Kangatotha
The point of a field school is not to go to sites where the action has politely resolved itself and examine the leavings of [...]
Staking (or flagging) a claim
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 [...]
Preparing a Paleolithic Barbeque
The Turkana Basin Field school has switched timescales again. In ecology we were learning about the rapid impact modern humans are having on our [...]
Lothagam: Studying rivers while surviving deserts
Lothagam was too expansive, too important, and just too beautiful to be limited to a one-day visit or one blog post. As [...]
Lothagam: Red Rocks and Honey Badgers
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 [...]
Defining the Holocene-“Anthropocene” boundary
Geology is often viewed as the study of the past, of what happened to get the planet to this point. But many geologists are [...]
SBU journalism students visit Turkana Basin
The ancient task, new every day, of finding water on Africa's arid plains. Celebrating a wedding by sacrificing and roasting a goat. Bringing electricity [...]
When Lake Turkana busted its banks
The shifting scale of geological inquiry can give you spatial and temporal whiplash. You go from scrutinizing a tiny quartz crystal to trying to [...]
The Geologist’s Toolkit
Geology is the foundation science. Pun intended. It is the study of how everything we can lay hands on came to be. Geology draws [...]
Ecological explosions and volcanic diversity
In the middle of Lake Turkana, an experiment is taking place without a single person touching a pipette or checking their controls. The open-air lab is called Central Island, and few people have had the opportunity to watch the experiment in action.
Original student research on the Turkana Basin ecosystem
Time flies, especially when you’re learning something new. In the case of the ecology module it was more likely to be mosquitoes or bees [...]
How does your garden grow?
Just upriver from the Turkana Basin Institute, a revolution is taking place.
Home on the Range?
The Turkana people are a traditionally pastoralist tribe, moving their livestock and their homes across the arid range in search of fodder and water for their animals.