We are now down to the last two modules of this Spring's field school. It's been a wonderful journey so far; and the students have now been joined by Dr. Sonia Harmand, who is teaching the penultimate module - Archaeology. On Monday, the students learned what archaeology is all about and discussed the ultimate question: [...]
Last Spring semester Dr. Fortelius, Dr. Meave Leakey and the TBI students initiated a simple taphonomy experiment. They started off with the exciting task of smashing Mary Leakey's crockery into small pieces, which were then buried at different levels within the TBI compound. Here is the link to the blog post: http://www.turkanabasin.org/2013/03/paleontology-off-to-a-smashing-start/. Taphonomy is the study [...]
Earlier last week Dr. Fortelius took the students down to the basement to look at the many specimens that have been collected over the year and to do some group tasks. TBI has an ever growing faunal collection with an amazing number of different East African species, which is great for comparative studies with fossils. Task [...]
Yesterday, the students learned about the history of life on Earth from the formation of the first micro organisms in the oceans, to the emergence of the first plants, dinosaurs and mammals. Their task for the afternoon was to use their newly acquired knowledge to reconstruct a large scale timeline of the Earth's history using [...]
As the Winter Olympics get well under-way in Russia, the TBI students have also embraced the sporting spirit and have organized their very own Olympic games here in Turkana. As with many great ideas, the students had this inspirational moment sitting around the dinner table one warm Turkana evening... And then the great idea turned [...]
The Spring 2014 Field School Vertebrate Paleontology module began this week with Prof. Mikael Fortelius who travelled to Turkana from Finland. Students are being introduced to the diversity and evolution of vertebrates in the Turkana Basin as well as the basic methods involved in searching for, documenting and collecting fossils in the field. This morning [...]
The next morning the students woke up at dawn, and after a simple breakfast, they set out for a long hike along the Nawata river bed and up the hills to the waterhole in the southern end of Lothagam. On the way, Abdi took the students to see a handaxe he had found the previous [...]
On Thursday, Dr. Feibel and guest professor Dr. Bob Raynolds, took the students on a geology camping trip to Lothagam, situated a few kilometres south of the Institute. Dr. Raynolds looking at the stratigraphy of a sandbar in the Turkwel River. Lothagam is an important site for geologists, palaeontologists, anthropologists and archaeologists because [...]