Hello World,
The theme of today was geology. David, the geologist at the camp, presented the class with a diagram of the bed numbers and layers of soil we’d be seeing out in Olduvai Gorge. He revealed that the lower algeria sandstone (LAS) in bed 2 is where we would be looking for fossil specimens. This layer is 1.7 million years old and was deposited by a river.
During the morning’s fossil hunt we were keeping an eye out for fossilized teeth. Teeth fossilize well due to their hard enamel coating. Teeth can tell you an exceptional amount about an environment such as the paleoclimate and diets of past animals. The group was searching for the fossilized teeth in a deep ravine, so we had to be extremely careful to not loose our footing as the drop off was significant at times. The loose sediments, although dangerous for us, was great for uncovering 1.5 million year old fossils.
After collecting our bags of fossilized teeth we went to the museum at Olduvai Gorge (which Dr. Manuel helped curate) to compare our teeth to their specimens in efforts to identify species accordingly. It was really cool! Just based on the shape of the teeth and height of the crowns, I was able to know that I had four 1.5 million year old zebra teeth and one ancestor of the common warthog. Dr. Manuel helped a lot with that determination because it can get very detailed.
Thank you for tuning in!
