Hi blog. Today was amazing! After breakfast, we headed over to the BK dig site. Professor Dominguez Rodrigo informed us that we would be participating in the actual excavation! We all claimed individual square plots, grabbed a flathead screwdriver, bucket, rock, and dustpan, and started digging. The rocks we used were handpicked by each of us because, before the dig, we visited a riverbed (with no water) and picked out smooth stones that were comfortable in our hands. Carina picked up a big pink quartz ball, and it was quite pretty! My rock was gray but conformed to my hand like a computer mouse would, so it was pleasant to use.
^Carina actively excavating by hitting her flathead screwdriver with her quartz ball.
^Me brushing dirt away from some of the fossils I was excavating.
During the actual excavation, we would cut through the sediment with a flathead screwdriver by hammering it with a rock into the ground. The sediment was very soft in the layer I was on, so it would turn into sand upon having been disturbed. Whenever the screwdriver hit something hard, it would typically be bone, stone tool, or calcium carbonate. There was so much calcium carbonate in the ground that my screwdriver kept hitting, and I was always worried that I was breaking bone instead of calcium carbonate.
I ended up finding a couple of stone tools and some bones. The most interesting find of mine was a vertebra of a large bovid, but Professor Dominguez Rodrigo seemed to think that my most interesting find was a giant stone tool used to create flakes. He kept complimenting the tool, which is why I think it was his favorite find of mine. There were tons and tons of bone shards mixed into the soil, and I kept bagging tiny pieces of bone along with calcium carbonate that I couldn’t distinguish from bone shards.
^The vertebra I found is towards the middle/bottom of the photo marked by a red pin, and the blue pins mark different types of stone tools I uncovered.
The layer I was excavating was the layer that hominids and hominid activities were typically found in, and the above layer that other students were working on belonged to a bunch of megafauna. They were excavating the ribs of a big hippo in that upper layer, and pretty much all the researchers were teamed up and working on the ribs.
After our morning of excavation at BK, we visited one of the Lesley’s previous excavation sites. The site was relatively new to the Olduvai team because they just reopened it five days before. We looked at all the megafauna bones and heard about how the Leakeys left a bunch of megafauna bones behind because they were unable to identify them. For the rest of the day, we continued excavations at the BK site. It’s cool to think that the million year old fossils and stone tools had never been seen prior to me uncovering and handling them. What a cool opportunity.
^Professor Dominguez Rodrigo walking us in between excavation sites.
^Professor Dominguez Rodrigo showing us how he uses photogrammetry at the Olduvai dig sites.
^We visited a Maasai market.
Thinking about my awesome vertebra,
Kacey
