DISPATCH 06: Elephant Remains
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Work continues on the Koobi Fora Ridge with the other half of the team, and we gradually move northeast. It's taking about forty minutes to drive out to work in the morning now. The exposures are very steep and they are finding many fossils here. However there are still no major finds. Fred Spoor and Meave Leakey excavated a delicate skull of an antelope. The antelopes and the pigs were abundant here in the past as were hippo and zebra too. An extraordinary elephant skull  was eroding out of one of these steep slopes and although there was not much left of the skull the teeth were still in quite good condition. This specimen was covered in plaster and collected as it would not have lasted much longer on its pedestal.
 
The team must have walked over five kilometres to the fossil area the day they found an isolated hominid premolar in area 106. On our walk out to collect this specimen we found a peculiar looking grasshopper nymph sitting on a rock growing slowly.


 

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