I am wary of bloggers and blogging, and have not done it much in the past. But here I am, reluctant to admit that I finally feel that I have something interesting to share with the wider TBI community and maybe the world. So here’s my first blog post from TBI Turkwel. And to those [...]
During their day off on Sunday, TBI Field School students traveled south to Turkana's Nakwaparit elementary school for a friendly game of football (soccer in American English). The Turkana name Nakwaparit describes the "flat white field" outside the school, used by students for informal football matches. Though Nakwaparit students were younger than TBI students, both [...]
Moruorot is found in the badlands north of TBI basecamp, on the west shore of Kenya's Lake Turkana. Literally meaning "Orot's Hill" in the local Turkana language, the site of Moruorot is dominated by a great hill around which lie beds of exposed and fossil-rich sediments, wearing away for the last 18 million years. Instructor [...]
As part of their study of the evolution of apes in East Africa, field school students visited a series of geological sites on Wednesday that have yielded fossils critical to that evolutionary history. The Lothodok (or Losodok) range extends along the western border of Lake Turkana, appearing as a series of high ridges or low [...]
Turkana Basin Institute Field School students now begin an intensive two week course studying paleoanthropology, with a focus on East Africa and the Turkana Basin in particular. Led by instructor Cara Roure Johnson of the University of Connecticut, with guest lectures by Meave Leakey, students have begun a study human and vertebrate osteology, and primate [...]
After staying the night in Lothagam's Nawata river beds, professor Craig Feibel, TBI students and staff continued their exploration of the site's complex geology and terrain. Temperatures during the two day excursion were sometimes as high as 115 F, but students were able to navigate a great portion of Lothagam's exposures. Below, students hike through [...]
Lothagam, on the southwest border of Lake Turkana, is one of the most important Miocene fossil bearing sites in the Rift Valley. Rising like a paleontological oasis from the desert, Lothagam consists of a series of high ridges, ravines, and fault planes that expose geological formations dating from 10,000 to 14 million years ago. Professor [...]
TBI students headed east along the Turkwell River, early last week, to map the stratigraphy of the Epim site: a series of lakebed and shoreline deposits that are less than 10,000 years old. Working diligently throughout the early morning hours, as shepherds passed bringing their goats to graze or feed at the river, students documented [...]