“Well, out of 120 quadrats 119 were covered in poop. Only the first wasn’t, but I don’t trust it. I don’t think we really knew what poop was yet.” Let it be known that I am a subpar researcher, but also that research is hard! It’s like really hard guys I am not even joking. First of all, the condition of “poop or no poop” was too basic, because let me tell you, it was everywhere. And don’t worry, it’s all animal – I think. We were on the outskirts of a dried up watering hole, only flourishing with green and gatherings during the wet season. But here it was nonetheless, dry and cracking in the heat of the sun, all the while its parched contour formed the outer boundary of our study. We wished to measure the density of poop and how it differs as you travel further from water; however, there were problems. Like I said, poop was just everywhere for one. But also our transects which are basically our area of survey were supposed to be parallel – they weren’t. Lets just say that somehow, even after setting up strict measurement and placement guidelines, we ended up running right through one another. To be fair they included things like “67 feet from the watering hole edge” but there was no water so like what even is the edge, as well as a compass heading of 35 degrees NS which almost no one ended up following – just be glad that none of us are employed yet.
It was hard to use our data, because it sucked, BUT perhaps that is good because what was most priceless was the overall experience. If I were to complete transects again I would be much more prepared and understanding of how to perform them and improve them. For that I am very thankful! I certaintly have a greater grasp upon the challenegs of field work, and have a new desire to complete much more of it in the future. If I ever get the chance again, I will be a little more specific and I hope will all my heart a little more parallel.
Later in the evening and after lunch – which I have not discussed often but will say is usually very yummy – we traveled once again to the Olduvai museum (different from that of the Leakey’s, this one is very near to camp and had most of its exhibits constructed by professor Manuel) so that we might identify the teeth we collected, and later reconstruct the paleoenvironment of the area. I had already completed the ID’s of all the teeth I had collected previously and so this portion of the class was rather relaxed. However, we did end up discussing the beginning of a reconstruction, counted the overall abundance, and made a few predictions. The gully therefore was most likely an open grassland near water, which makes sense cause the bones were found in a river bed area. Professor Manuel also discussed with us the idea that perhaps early man could have used the hot springs within this paleoenviroment in order to cook early foods, an idea that fascinated me greatly. I hope to research it further, and to dream of ways in which I may help to understand it.
Also a quick side note is that I made professor Solomon laugh really hard after I explained that professor Manuel looked like he was a rainforest cafe waiter. He went around with his field clothes, with pen and paper in hand, writing down our tooth abundance as if it was our orders and pointing at our notebooks like menus. Go me, that was awesome!
Hopefully I have more to tell and learn shortly, and I look forward to using bovid abundance to reconstruct the paleo environment!
Thank you for reading and I can’t wait to see everybody!
Godspeed,
Kamden
