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The Koobi Fora airstrip flooded during earlier heavy rains. It became dry enough this week
for the team to clear and remark it in preparation for a plane due to
land. |
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WEEK 5 |
Text and photographs by Louise
Leakey |
ominic has
found a hominid molar early this week, an unworn and unerupted M3. He must have very sharp eyes to have
spotted it amongst the pebbles.
When an isolated tooth is found on the surface like
this there is a slim chance that any more of the
specimen will be there. As always we screen the soil
to check that we have left nothing behind. You have to
screen a large enough area to maximize the chances of
finding more of it. At some point one must decide that
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Sharp-eyed Dominic discovered a hominid tooth
disguised amongst a litter of pebbles. |
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no more is likely to come from that screen and call it
quits. Time is better spent looking for other
specimens. Unfortunately nothing more did turn up in
the screen of this one although several afternoons
were spent at that site.
One afternoon this week the team spent clearing and
marking the runway near the camp as a small aircraft
was due to land at the end of the week and it needed
to be checked. It is soft and only small and powerful
plane can get out of there. This runway gets a strong
crosswind so pilots landing there must be most
cautious.
Every evening maps need to be drawn up from the GPS
points of specimens found the previous day. This
facilitates the location and collection of specimens
which is a time-consuming process, especially as each
specimen requires several digital photographs,
detailed note-taking, position report with GPS, and an
accurate position on the aerial photograph. The maps
of the points means that it is easier to locate the
specimens and you don’t go round in circles collecting
specimens that were found close to each other.
This week more good specimens were found including
Homotherium metapodials (foot bones of a sabre-tooth cat) and several fossil Colobine monkeys, the first Colobines this season. Meave and Nina are
both fossil monkey specialists so this is particularly
pleasing to them. Nasser found two large skulls just
beginning to erode out of the surface so these will be
in very good condition. One of these is a pig skull,
probably Metridiocherus andrewsi, a common
grazing pig at that time that would have filled a
similar niche to the warthogs along the shores
of modern-day lake Turkana. The other skull is a hippo
skull, and the crest running along the top of its skull
is all that is showing of this specimen. Much of the rest
of it is likely to be intact. These specimens will
need careful excavation and plastering. We will
describe to you how this is done in a later dispatch
and take some pictures of the different stages.
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| Robert has found the third hominid fossil of the
season. |
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Another hominid
this week: Robert found half of a molar, which
was quite worn and weathered, but this is the third
hominid of the season and everyone wants to find their
own now. There is always healthy competition between
the team members. This hominid was screened and a
second part of this molar was found in the sieve. A
tiny bit of it is still missing and is quite likely to
have been overlooked as it is so small.
In camp fresh food supplies, especially meat, were
getting low, so team members Sina and Arkoi took the old green
pickup to Ileret, the nearest village, to find some
goats to purchase. The drive there takes three hours,
and unfortunately it was quite late by the time they
had found the fourth goat, as they have to buy them
from the herders who have their stock out to pasture
sometimes far from Ileret. They were unable to get a
message back to the camp to let Meave know their
intention to spend the night and drive back the next
day. Meave was of course worried when they were not
back at 9.30 and so decided that she had better drive
the three hours to Ileret and see if they had broken
down along the way. It was a beautiful full moon and
they saw a hyaena, a wild cat, many hares, nightjars
and even a rare aardwolf in the light of the
headlamps. They found them at last and drove back
together, goats and all, arriving in camp at 3.30 in
the morning after a very long days work. It was
decided to give the crew the following day off and to
try to catch up on camp chores, washing of clothes and
computer work.
Louise Leakey,
Koobi Fora
February, 2004
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PROJECT DESCRIPTION: The Koobi Fora Research Project annual
paleoanthropological expedition. |
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LOCATION:
The area surrounding Lake Turkana, in the
extreme north of Kenya. This region is
extremely rich in hominid fossils and has
produced some of the oldest dates for Homo.
Launch
Position Locator. |
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PURPOSE:
To increase knowledge of the origins of our
genus, Homo, and the context in which
we evolved. |
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