Let it be known that being brutally awoken by stomach cramps and a non-solid bowel movement is not a very fun way to start your morning. Alas, I must regretfully report that the status of my digestive health has turned from good to poor. I have added chewable Pepto Bismol tablets to every meal, and I honestly really like the way they taste.
Today marked the start of our hands-on experience in excavation! We headed over to a gully in Olduvai Gorge and surveyed both sides of the gully for teeth! I found so many bones in my search and even used stone tools to help me dig. After whistling while I worked, I ended up finding 6 non-fragmented teeth! In all honesty, this number isn’t that impressive considering that a couple people found over 15 teeth. I briefly considered pulling out some of my own teeth and adding them to my teeth bag, but I decided that I didn’t want to risk an infection. I could’ve dug for teeth for hours. The rush of finding a tooth is indescribable. I just wanted to dig, dig, dig, dig, dig.
Surveying the gully for teeth
We took our teeth to the Olduvai museum and compared our teeth to the ones in the exhibits to try and deduce the taxonomic group and possibly species. It was the most fun puzzle I’ve ever done. I ended up classifying mine as three sets of Antidorcas recki (Antilopini tribe) teeth, one Equus (zebra) tooth, and two sets of wildebeest (Alcelaphini tribe) teeth. It was really cool to find and hold the A. recki teeth after researching so much about the extinct species for my recon presentation. I got to hold the teeth of an animal that doesn’t exist anymore!!
Teeth bags!
My teeth (L to R: wildebeest, A. recki, zebra)
Top view of wildebeest and A. recki teeth
Some of us went on a nice afternoon stroll during our break and found an ancient-looking locust that reminded me of the antagonist grasshoppers in A Bug’s Life. Kamden posed with it like a fisherman would pose with his catch.
Look at the size of that locust!
We got to visit the site of Mary Leakey’s camp! Mary Leakey and her husband really pioneered the archeological research at Olduvai Gorge, and it was cool to visit her research base that she stayed at in the 1970s and 1980s. The poison apple of today was having to apply for another Kenya travel authorization visa. It’s not clear whether we need them to get back into Kenya to fly out of Nairobi, but it would really suck to not be let across the border. That being said, we thought it was best to go through the application again. One good thing that came out of going through that online process with horribly slow wifi was banded mongooses!!! We stumbled across a bunch of mother and baby mongooses in very close proximity to us, and we got to watch the mommas groom and play with their babies. It was cuteness in its purest form.
I shall now zip into my increasingly stinky sleeping bag and enter my nightly coma. And instead of counting sheep, I will be counting teeth.
