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A thirsty crew takes an
afternoon water break. Constant rehydration is essential, as the heat in
Turkana is quite intense and the climate very dry. |
MORE PHOTOS
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WEEK 6 |
Text and photographs by Louise
Leakey |
huge
solifugid (courtesy Insecta.com) has been preying on the bugs by the
light in the evening. It was stalking a preying mantis
one night but did not get it! Solifugids are arachnids
which resemble
gigantic spiders with very hairy legs and enormous
mandibles. They are very frightening-looking
creatures...legs and all they can be as big as your
hand! There is a
lizard that sits by that light at
night too, getting an easy dinner. He’s rather a fat
lizard as he does not have to work for his food! Nina
and George had another solifugid and a scorpion visit
their paraffin lamp also catching insects so they
thought is was safer to turn the light off!
We needed to send a car to Ileret to drop off Denge,
who is to oversee the heath clinic refurbishment and
training as part of the community health project that
AMREF are initiating. Unfortunately with Njoroge, our
top mechanic, in Nairobi, the vehicles have not had
enough attention of late; one needs a centre bolt,
another a universal joint, another a starter motor and
the car that went to Ileret began to overheat and run
low on oil. This sounds like the cylinder head gasket
needs replacing. Meave had to drive to Ileret again
with some more oil and water to rescue them. At least
it was daylight this time! This means we are down to
one car now! A bit of a squeeze to get the whole team
in! But we’ll get the cars going again soon.
Work has continued in our usual good form. The geology
of Nasser’s hominid was confirmed to be in the section
dated around 2 million years, not recent as we had
thought at one time. Nina, George and Meave found the
horizon and more fossils of the same colour and
texture so this is reassuring. Nyete found another
hominid. This time it was an isolated premolar of a
boisei, fairly worn but in good condition. Robert also
found
more hominid fossils while walking
back to the car—this time three skull fragments.
Two of them fit together and the third is slightly
thicker and might be towards the back of the skull.
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The yellow circle marks a mandible of a cane rat.
These small, delicate fossils are not often
preserved and thus quite rare. This photo also
illustrates the difficulty we sometimes experience
trying to spot fossils here. |
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The crew also found the mandible of a fossil cane
rat. It was quite hard to see amongst the pebbles and
it incredible that they found it at all. From the
picture it appears to be just a pebbled surface but on
it is a slightly darker pebble which is the
mandible. These small
delicate fossils are not often preserved and are also
hard to find. Nina found a distal tibia of a fossil hyaena this week, also fairly rare in the fossil
record. I am certainly not mentioning all of the
fossils that are found each day. There are far too
many. I am telling you about the highlights only!
It has been very windy in the daytime, although some
of the nights have been very still indeed. In the
afternoons big storms blow up to the north but no real
rain as of yet. Only cloudy afternoons, which in this
scorching part of the world are much appreciated.
Especially if it drizzles slightly to cool us down.
In spite of its harsh terrain the area around Lake
Turkana has its share of wild things. There was a
small family of warthogs not far from camp with two
piglets. You don’t often see piggies here. A barn owl
flew off disturbed one morning. This could have been
the one I rescued last summer. He had a broken wing,
and I took him back to Nairobi with me to have fixed.
I released it into the moonlight two months later. It
was flying beautifully then. And there was a little
sand snake in the mess one evening this week—they
are quite harmless. It is the carpet vipers that we
really have to look out for, as their bite is not at
all friendly.
Louise Leakey,
Koobi Fora
March, 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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