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DISPATCH 05: Bit by Bit
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KOOBI FORA, Kenya

Work is ongoing at Ileret and we are
enlarging the excavation by two meters on either side of the original area. The excavators, Robert and Steven, sit under a shade at the site slowly and carefully chipping away at the sediment. It is quite dusty too as the wind gets up mid morning. The sediment that is screened on location is collected into piles and put into sacks and trucked back to Koobi Fora for a second round of sieving. This time the sediment is washed and dried before it is screened by the team at Koobi Fora in the afternoons.

Some small bits of fossil
have been recovered but as of yet none of them belong to the hominid. The north portion is now complete but work is slow and hot as they painstakingly dig away at the hard, fine siltstone using Kitibi picks (Kitibi was one of the original fossil hunters who used to work for the research project in the 1970’s and made the picks out of an appropriately shaped piece of acacia branch with a sharpened 6-inch nail sunk into the end of it. These remain the best tools for excavating with).

At the end of this week the rest of the team will move from Koobi Fora to
Ileret to open up the eastern section and get that completed. We will also use the opportunity to do some fossil hunting in the surrounding area and collect some of the fossils that need more urgent recovery.


 

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