Collaborating with the local Daasanach community
Photo credit: Miquel Torrents-Ticó. Local ecological knowledge, stemming from generations of human-wildlife interactions, is becoming an increasingly more significant source of important data for wildlife biologists. […]
Hydroponic gardening at TBI’s research facilities
In our effort to produce fruit and green vegetables locally, to supply the Turkana Basin Institute field stations at Ileret and Turkwel, we set up two successful hydroponics gardens. Hydroponics is the process of growing plants in sand, gravel or liquid, with added nutrients but without soil. Michael Kibumba manages the gardens, and with [...]
“Alesi”: Discovery & Analysis
The discovery in Kenya of a remarkably complete fossil ape skull reveals what the common ancestor of all living apes and humans may have looked like. The find, announced in the scientific journal Nature on August 10th, belongs to an infant that lived about 13 million years ago. The research was done by an [...]
Ileret campus from the air
Aerial image of TBI's Ileret facility. Image credit: Tanya Carr-Hartley.
World Water Day 2017
When Richard Leakey invited Sarah, Duchess of York, to visit the Turkana Basin Institute in Kenya their plan was to talk about humankind's place in the world. Sarah did not know that she would be visiting one of the places most affected by the devastating drought in northern Kenya just before World Water Day. [...]
Cheetah at Mpala Research Centre
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.