There once was a cat we named Rabies
He was the cutest of babies
We’d like to give pets
But he’s seen no vets
We’ll save cat cuddles for Istanbul, maybe
We started off our morning bright and early with an intensive ten-minute abbreviation of Tophomony 101 courtesy of Dr. Manuel Dominguez-Rodrigo. The purpose? Learning how to distinguish marks made on bones by hominids from marks made on bones by carnivores. This course included two live demonstrations by Dr. Dominguez-Rodrigo: Bone Smashing by Hammerstone (to see green breakage by hominid tools on real bone) and Cut Marks on Bone By Stone Tool (viewed under a hand lens to see how cut marks can be distinguished by tooth marks). Good times, 10/10 learning and entertainment experience.
Armed with our newfound knowledge, the thirteen of us set out into the field, back to the same gulley in Olduvai where we collected fossil teeth earlier in the trip. This time, our goal was to collect fossilized bones (with an emphasis on long bones) that showed green breakage and/or evidence of carnivore or hominid manipulation. We surveyed the gulley up and down for about an hour, quickly filling our plastic bags with an abundance of fossils from shard size to femur size. I think I have also gotten better at the lemur-style methodology of clambering up and down the sediment of the gulley walls, although I am still working on resisting the temptation to be distracted by every shiny rock I see.
Before lunch, around 9:30, we left the gulley, loaded into the landcruisers, and headed back to BK for another excavation session! I was in the lower layer this time. I noticed the the rock was very different just a half meter below where I had dug in the previous two excavation sessions – the rock was darker, with very soft and sandy sections interspersed with very hard rock and cemented pebble layers. I found a lot of bone fragments! I also unearthed two quartzite stone tools and two larger bone fragments (longer than 2 cm, which is quite the accomplishment in my book).
After lunch, we had three presentations: Paleoclimate by Vivian, Microwear by Marlo, and Geomorphological Reconstruction of Landscapes by Isabella. All were very good! I feel like with our presentation schedule plus impromptu words of wisdom from Dr. Solomon and Dr. Manuel, my brain has been stuffed to capacity with ecological and archeological wisdoms these past weeks, for which I am quite grateful. The presentations took place in our office (the Museum restaurant), where we had the pleasure of observing two mongeese jumping into the trash can to retrieve prizes (a piece of paper, which one of them ate, and a banana peel). I love a good mongoose. They are quite silly and I appreciated it.
Our task when we returned to camp was to go through our bone collections and try to decipher which were carnivore damaged, which were hominid damaged, and which actually had green breakage or damage signs at all.
Despite the knowledge I had recorded in my notebook just that morning, I ended up divvying up my bones largely on vibe due to the lack of available hand lenses and my own lack of general expertise. What I found:
5 fossils showed evidence of gnawing on the greasier bone head (carnivore)
5 fossils showed potential carnivore tooth marks
4 fossils showed potential hominid cute marks (stone tool)
5 fossils had green breakage but nothing else conclusive
When Dr. Manuel returned, though, he helped lead us through a series of conclusions that even our untrained eye could see:
We didn’t find many axial bones or bone heads likely because those are the greasy, nutritious bones that carnivores will target first and consume. We didn’t find many unbroken long bones because carnivores (and hominids) would target the marrow inside. We found many types of damage indicative of hyenids, which are very tough on bones – actually, this is backed by two key fossils retrieved from Olduvai that Dr. Manuel theatrically revealed to us, blowing our collective minds: we know that there were actually two ancient hyenids at the time, more about twice the size of modern hyenas and the other far larger, as big as a very large bear. Its tooth absolutely dwarfed that of a modern hyenid, and made me grateful to not be a Tanzanian resident some one and a half million years ago. The high degree of competition indicated by the degree of bone destruction we saw reflects a very open landscape, which actually agrees with our fossilized tooth analysis!
Before dinner, I went on one last sunset walk with some fellow Tanzanian Travelers, which was such a lovely experience! Walking along the tire tracks in the sand, watching the sun set across the gorge, and hoping for a Disney Princess type giraffe encounter (sadly no giraffes were spotted).
We had our last soup, our last dinner at Olduvai, and went off to bed. I will miss this place so much, and being here has certainly been one of the coolest experiences of my life so far and one I will remember for a good long time! Thank you Dr. Manuel and Dr. Scott for making this happen, and granting me this absolutely incredible opportunity!
Sincerely,
Caroline (I dried my clothes on an Oldupai bush and have no regrets [there are ants in my shirt])
The Last Soup
Acacias at Sunset
