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The team observes Louise landing her plane upon return to
Turkana.
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DISPATCH 05:
Bit by Bit
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Dispatch
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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