“Nobody forget your teeth!” What kind of question is that you might ask? An appropriate one. Dr. Solomon was asking about my fossils not my pearly whites, but I hope I am bringing both wherever I go! Today we surveyed a gully of Olduvai gorge, learning of the geological record in the area through seeing it at work. Here was volcanic ash layered yellow and salty and soft, the LAS upper river with wide spanning black dirts and dark stones, and bones – bones were here. Bones were everywhere. Each fossilized, some whole, but few were what we were looking for. We needed teeth, and yet I found plenty of them. A few from an elephant, one from an ancient warthog, and the rest from the offshoots of long expired ungulates. Everyone kept their heads down and their hopes up during the search for such things, and in time we all did end with a very sizable number of data points – that being plenty of teeth! We meant to use them in order to reconstruct the environment which occurred in this gully around 1.5 million years ago, and so could employ our paleo methods such as bovid distribution in order to gain insight (that one was mine).
We traveled to the museum and learned how to correctly identify the teeth, refining the characteristic morphology of grazers with their robust crowns or of browsers with their shearing crests among others. We were taught to distinguish between the different tribes of bovid, and were made aware of how to be more successful in refining our guesses – and so were we? No. We kinda sucked, but we got much better over time and used Professor Manuel for help often, and in this case often actually means very often. I have no shame though. He’s about the msot expert, expert you could ask for.
And in the evening we traveled to the Leakey museum, which was the camp of the original excavators of Olduvai. The Leakey’s were the proverbial mother and father of the gorge, beginning the first excavations and finding the first of many sites along with Paranthropus. I especially appreciated it because we were able to see the artifacts of both their working lives and their digs. There was a landrover from the 60s parked as if returned from a day of work, last driven by its pedigreed owners. The beds were original, the buildings furnished, and the grounds are where they would have walked and been familiar. It’s funny, but apparently the museum does not get many visitors. And at the thought of that I imagined the distant future, that someday perhaps the human race will explore space and colonize the stars, and when seperated from Earth will look toward the early evolution of man with more interest and longing. Seeing as the gorge is of such importance to our understanding of early man, I am sure the Leakey family will grow in the same respect as the people who discovered it all. Basically, maybe cool people from space will visit and help fill up the guest book! Speaking of, I made an off hand joke that I saw president Obama had visited – that was a mistake. Disinformation spread like butter on hot toast and everyone else was telling everyone else, “oh my gosh Obama was here”, I hate to break it to everyone but no, he wasn’t (commence crying).
Overall today was wonderful and enlightening, and I feel I have already learned so much. I can’t wait for what is to come and look forward to the great opportunties that lay ahead.
Thank you for reading.
Godspeed,
Fossil expert Kamden
