Bones! Tools! Rocks! We explored some of the gorge and searched for animal bones and stone tools, which were scattered everywhere. Our specific focus for today was collecting fossilized animal teeth, bringing them back to the Olduvai Museum, and attempting to identify them. Later on, we’ll analyze them to reconstruct the historic paleoenvironment of the region.
Here’s a haul of what I found! There was so much just littered on the surface, so I found way more than this, but only collected a small proportion. Hearing about the geology of the bed from David, the camp’s geologist, was fascinating. I found stone tools made of all kinds of rock, from quartz to green phonolite. When picking up the tools, it’s very odd to think that I might be the first person to hold them in millions of years.
After some identification of the teeth (I found some segments of giraffe molars and zebra incisors!), we headed back to camp for lunch. Then we visited the Mary Leakey Museum, which is the old camp of the Leakey family, who were the original archaeologists who excavated Olduvai Gorge. We got to see their old Land Rover and their lab filled with fossils!
There was a slight issue with our travel authorizations to get back into Kenya for the return trip home, so we had to go to the Olduvai Museum (which is the only place with wifi for miles) to apply for new ones.
When we’re driving around at dusk, sometimes we’ll see dik-dik, which are so adorable! There’s also a very vocal cat that likes to wander around the camp, who we‘ve affectionately named Rabies. The food at the research station is so yummy, shoutout to the camp cooks!
If you were a stone tool, what would you do?
Carina
