Pelarovis were quite large and horned
Silvetherium was, by large osocones, adorned
Parmularius ate grass
with teeth built to last
Not Giraffids, though, who browsed between thorns
Quote of the day: “The hat man is a giraffe”
Today we got to actually really excavate on a real archeological site! The site in question was BK, which was first investigated by the Leakeys some fifty years ago. Some 1.35 million years ago, it was a wide river with a meandering shallow slope on one side and higher speed, deeper water on the other. Dr. Manuel’s team re-excavated the site and is still working on that project – between his team’s discoveries and the Leakey’s discoveries, 24 Pelarovis (extinct giant buffalo relatives) and multiple Silvetherium (extinct giant giraffe relatives) have been dug up, all but a few of which showed intense butchery by ancient hominids. This intense butchery, in which every part of the meat and bone was utilized, indicate these ancient hominids (likely Paranthropus, the “robust” hominids) were living in huge groups.
To excavate, each of us was situated in our own small square in the excavation site, armed with a chisel (screwdriver), hammerstone (rock), brush, dustbin, and bucket. We carefully chiseled away the rock, brushing away dust and placing excess rock in the buckets. Bones (or lithics) larger than 2 cm were labeled with pushpins, small specimens went in plastic baggies. We worked for around 2.5 hours in the morning, and an hour and a half in the evening. In that time I unearthed several bone fragments, one of which was larger then 2 cm! There is something very satisfying about carefully pulverizing rock in even layers and sifting through dust for wee bones, especially since we were literally using stone tools to do so. There is something very unifying about all sitting around in the dust listening to the sound of chisels on rock and asking the professionals “Is this one a bone? I swear it looks like a bone” repeatedly.
We then hopped in the car and stopped by the New Site on our way to lunch to see some recent megafauna and stone tool excavations. There was a really cool pile of surface fossils (most of which were clearly from MASSIVE animals) that Dr. Manuel used to show us the different between green and dry breaks. Essentially, dear readers, green breaks are breaks that occurred very soon after the animal’s death and were made by carnivores or impact (like a hammerstone). They are characterized by clean, smooth surfaces at acute angles. And, if you look really closely, you can sometimes spot tooth marks or impact marks. All of this information is really important to knowing how the critter died, and what animals (or hominids!) were active in the community.
In the afternoon before our evening dig session, we stopped by the local Maasai market which was a really cool and insightful experience. Many of the Maasai were selling dry foods, cloth, spices, electronics, beads, clothing, and much more – including a goat exchange. The goods were laid out on blankets on the ground, with shoppers and sellers meandering around the marketplace. My favorite part were the many donkeys (including babies!) wandering around or tied to trees, they really added to the experience and it was very hard to resist the urge to pet a snout or two. One of the archeologists advised us to haggle, and I learned I am a terrible haggler and maybe paid a bit two much for the beads I bought.
We had three presentations today! “Paleobotanical Reconstruction from Soil Biomarkers” by Kacey, “Habitat and Community Reconstruction using Carnivore Competition” by Enoch, and “Taphonomic Bias Profiling” by Rose. All were very good and I learned so much! I really am learning a lot about archeology this week.
Our last activity of the day was going over the camera trap footage from the cameras we placed in Olbalbal earlier in the week, which Dr. Solomon had gone out to collect that afternoon. It was a wild good time, a proper ecology movie night. Our question: “How does proximity to lake Olbalbal affect [mammal] species richness and abundance”?
Our data: inconclusive and somewhat terrifying.
Allow me to elaborate. The cameras closest to the lake definitely had less richness and abundance, but there wasn’t a clear linear relationship between lake proximity and either diversity measure. We did get some TERRIFYING nocturnal captures of giraffes in which only their lanky legs could be seen in ghostly white. And there were some nocturnal zebra captures in which their glowing eyes were staring right at the camera. Most of the daytime captures, however, could be described as “goat selfies”. Apparently, also, one of our cameras was taken by a Maasai kid and had to be put back by the guard we hired. It was an adventure. In the future, to replicate this experiment, we would likely want to put our cameras further from villages and herds, and maybe have some more cameras to get a larger study size. Either way, it was a fun little experiment and I had a good time going through the photos with everyone.
My nightly tradition has become star photography. I lay myself down on the dust and point my camera at the sky, staying as still as possible trying to capture the miracle that is a night sky devoid of light pollution. They are always a little blurry and staticky, but I’ll always have the memories.
Sincerely,
Caroline (500 tiny round birds in a trenchcoat)
Teeth of a baby hippo
The Donkeys
