Families are considered functional units of a typical human society. Depending on the geographic and cultural origin, families can come in different shapes and sizes. The most straightforward way to relate all the members of an extended family is to draw a family tree. Most people know their immediate relatives such as a parent or [...]
Origins Field School students don’t have to worry about what's for dinner, as we are provided with healthy and delicious food every day. But what is on the menu for other animals? How can we use them to infer the diet of their fossil relatives?
Where does the world come from is one of the most fascinating questions people have asked for thousands of years. Needless to say, the Earth came a long way before it took the shape that we can recognize today. How do we know about major Earth history events such as splitting up of continents, appearance [...]
In the Geology module of the Origins field school, student learned about the earth’s history and how this history is recorded in the layers of sediment in the Turkana Basin. Now it is time to decipher the enigma of different plants and animals that lived in the history of the Turkana Basin millions of years [...]
In our last episode of geologic endeavor, students learned about the two dominating sedimentary systems of the Turkana Basin: the river system and the lake system. They are the integral forces that laid down layers of rocks in the basin, together with important fossils of early mammals and hominins. To understand the differences between the [...]
Origins Field School students observe cheetah at Mpala Research Centre in central Kenya. Studying the wildlife of a modern East African savanna ecosystem provides students an analog for studying the ancient environment of the Lake Turkana Basin, which millions of years ago was much more lush and green than today.
Origins Field School students observe a pack of African wild dogs at Mpala Research Centre.
Students of the Turkana Basin Institute Origins Field School observe a Hippo pod at Mpala Research Centre in central Kenya. Part of the Ecology course of the program, students' experiences at Mpala provide a context for visualizing the ancient landscape of Lake Turakana several million years ago.