Sleep last night came speedily, however I do have bruises on my hips after the many days sleeping on the ground, considering stuffing socks in my pockets for padding. The stars were also amazing last night as the moon had not yet risen, I think I was able to capture the milky way.
(photos of the milky way captured)
Today we did a lot, we first went to a dig site and searched for different fossilized teeth. They were scattered everywhere, as long as you looked close enough. It really showed how prolific the area is for fossils and why the researchers here can be so causal about things like finding a zebra tooth. Many of the teeth I have found were embedded in the dirt and I had to use a stone tool to dig it out. I think if med school doesn’t work out I should go into hunter gatherer. I was able to find teeth with really big crowns, most of them zebras and antelopini but I was able to find one juvenile crocodile tooth. The grazer teeth were rectangular and had patterns on the top of the tooth whereas the crocodile tooth came to a point at the top. We brought these teeth to the museum where we learned how to identify them. It was cool to be casually walking around the museum with 1.8 million year old teeth in hand, comparing them to the fossils in the display cases. The people who were visiting the museum had no idea what we were doing (those chumps), which added another layer of surreal-ness to it, as we would be standing next to them holding up these teeth trying to make a comparison (we probably looked crazy).
(all of the teeth I collected)
After this, we headed back to camp for lunch and had our student presentations right after. I liked this method better because not only was it warmer to sit outside and listen to the lectures, but we didn’t have to stay up late into the night trying to finish them while manually holding our eyes open to stop them closing and falling into endless sleep. I will say however, that I was not less tired, and as soon as the presentations were over, I crashed and took a 45 minute nap while other people went on a small walkabout the camp.
After that we traveled to the Mary Leaky campsite museum, and we were able to see where she conducted her research, the kind of accommodations she had including her range rover, and how she harvested her electricity and water. In the fossil room there, it was cool to see that some of the handwriting on the boxes were from Dr. Prendergast, as she was there organizing the fossils back in 2007. It really reinforced how lucky our course is, to learn and be surrounded by archeologists who are so knowledgeable and involved in the field.
After the museum, we went to the other museum for wifi as we needed to get another Kenyan Visa. It took a long time, no surprise, but we finally secured it, went back to the camp and did a small hike before dinner, ate dinner, and ended the day with a presentation from Dr. Charles.
Ciao for now my fans
Isabella-2024-Bovini
