Today I was a scavenging bird
I dug up teeth from an ancient herd
They once grazed and browsed
Then in stone they were housed
By ash, dust, and stone tools obscured
Quote of Day:
“What did you get in your tooth bag?”
”I got a rock”
The morning’s activity this morning was digging up fossil teeth in the Olduvai Gorge. It was beyond cool. The morning started post-breakfast with a lecture from Geologist David, who briefed us on the rock, clay, and tuff layers of the area of the Gorge we would be surveying. I drew a very cool looking diagram in my notebook. We would be looking through the colluvium, the eroded sand, rock, and fossils that have weathered off of the upper layers of the Gorge walls and been dragged down over the lower layers by gravity.
To collect the teeth, we traveled to a gulley in the Gorge and split into two teams (one searching the left side and one on the right). We surveyed from the Lower Algitic Sand layer and below (because there aren’t really any fossils in the area below LAS so fossils found there have fallen from the LAS). We looked at the dirt and rocks and sifted through a bit to find the teeth. They were quite tricky to spot but very exciting to find! There were also so many other shiny rocks, stone tools, and other body fossils!
Even though I found 50 total tooth parts and fragments, it turned out that only 14 of them were identifiable. And some of them might have been just rocks. Maybe.
We had a lecture on tooth structure and the tooth identification for different tribes within the Bovidae family (horned ungulates), and then were set loose at the museum to identify our teeth! It was a struggle, I must be honest. I do not think I have a future as a dentist. Dr. Dominguez-Rodrigo had to give me a lot of hints, it must be said. But I did it! I identified all fourteen down to the tribe level! Two of them were crocodile teeth!
It was actually a great deal of fun looking for fossils, especially as a person who is very much inclined to collect shiny objects (I may or may not have decorated the outside of my tent with quartz bits I’ve found around the campsite). And I learned a lot about the different Bovid tribes! I wasn’t assigned any of the ungulates for my taxon, so I came into this trip with something of a rudimentary understanding of the group. I am now something of an expert.
We returned to the campsite for lunch, then had three presentations on paleontological methods: Ecomorphoplogy by Alex, Community Structure Analysis and Ecometrics by myself, and “An Introuction to Understanding Habitat Reconstruction through Bovid Abundance Representation” by Kamden. Graphs were observed, mathematics discussed, confusion was had, and learning was done.
In the afternoon we had a trip to the Mary Leakey Living Museum. We got to see the camp she lived and worked in – the guest apartments, her apartment, her car, and (most cool) her lab! Easily hundreds of fossils, including a Silvetherium osocone and mandible which were impossibly large (for context, dea readers, Silvetherium is a gigantic prehistoric giraffe with a shorter neck but way more massive body). It was very cool to learn more about the history of archeology in Olduvai, and the work and legacy of the Leakeys.
Our original plan after the museum was to go on a sunset walk, but, unfortunately, we came to the realization that our Kenyan visas were only one-way tickets. As lovely as Tanzania is, it would be unfortunate to be stranded permanently (perhaps not that unfortunate though, I am very fond of being here), so we headed on over to the main museum to harness WiFi and register for new visas. I only momentarily contemplated throwing my iPad in the gorge what with slow WiFi, a not great Kenyan government website, having to restart halfway through, and uploading the worst selfie known to man. We did it though! And guess what?? We saw dikdiks! Tiny antelopes with prolonged snoots and tiny little twig legs. They pair up for life, apparently, as if they could get any cuter.
After dinner, we had a very good and interesting presentation on using modern bone remain assemblages in nearby savanna microhabitats to learn more about carnivore behavior and how bones may be influence pre-fossilization, by Dr. Charles. I learned lots. Then I sleep lots.
Goodnight, gentle readership
Sincerely
Caroline (possessor of a Kenyan EVisa)
Fossil collections at the Mary Leakey Museum