Hello World,
On this final day in Olduvai Gorge we did a mixture of things. We started the day by collecting some fossilized long bones in a gully of the gorge. The goal of collecting the long bones was to determine if breakage was done after or before fossilization. If the break happened before fossilization then we wanted to determine whether the breakage was caused by carnivores or humans.
We found that most of the bones were broken by carnivores. Carnivores leave evidence of chewing at the ends of long bones which are the fattiest parts. The number of bones impacted by carnivores points towards a highly competitive environment. Open environments are the most competitive, so the long bone evidence indicates an open environment 1.5 million years ago in the gully we were surveying.
We ended the exciting last day by going on a sunset walk. 6 of us took a road past the camp on foot in efforts of seeing the sunset without any obstructions. After treading through sand and sharp acacia bushes we finally saw the sun set beneath the gorge. It was a beautiful end to the trip with the sound of livestock bells in the distance.
Thank you for tuning in!
