First days in Africa
I landed in Africa in the early evening of 16 June 2012. It's a poignant moment in personal history equal as an event to my arrival in the Amer...
Relocating inland
After spending nearly a week collecting fossils near the Koobi Fora Spit, we relocated inland to the Karari Escarpment. The photo collection shows the range ...
In camp
We camped at Karari at a desiccated river bed where some vegetation provided welcome cover from the scorching heat during the day. Temperatures reached ...
Collecting more fossils
The Karari Escarpment is part of the Koobi Fora Formation, which records stages in human evolution over a 3 million period, from ca. 4 to 1 million years ago...
Research Summary: Comparative morphology of the talus bone of Plio-Pleistocene vertebrates
My research hypothesizes that with an effective "whole 3D surface ordination" technique statistically significant variation in vertebrate morpholog...
Bringing a goat to roast
Every year staff of the Department of Earth Sciences of the National Museums of Kenya come together in November for an outing. In 2012, we went to the active...
Mary Mount Secondary School, Molo, at Kariandusi
John Mwangi of the National Museums of Kenya welcomed over 120 pupils of Mary Mount Secondary School Molo at the Kenyan archeological site at Kariandusi near...
National Museums of Kenya
The National Museums of Kenya (NMK), established in 1910, is one of Africa's leading institutions for scholarship, research and outreach in paleontolo...
Swiss Ambassador's Visit to the NMK
I thought it useful that both National Museums of Kenya staff and Swiss Embassy guests have some background information on current and potential future Swiss...
Biodiversity in extreme environments
Lakes Elementaita and Nakuru are soda lakes in the southern part of the East African Rift. High concentrations of carbonate salts makes them both very alkali...
Traveling back to the Frontier
Traveling back again to the Turkana Basin felt great. The Basin is a frontier on many fronts. It is home to pastoralists, who eke out a living from a region ...
Landing on Central Island
Central Island in the middle of Lake Turkana was formed by volcanic activity. It's known as the home of hundred of crocodiles, and we certainly saw some ...
Exploring Lothagam
Lothagam is a famous paleontological site on the West side of Lake Turkana about an hour's drive from our base camp. The site is very rich in fossils of ...
Discovering hominins
Initially, we thought that the sediments around an area adjoining the Turkwel river near the small settlement of Kang'athota would be early Holocene...
Searching for the last common ancestor
The geological period of the Miocene, from 23 to 5.3 million years ago, represented a brief respite in the general cooling trend of the last 34 million years...
Pieces to the Australopithecus puzzle
Hill crawls and surface sweeps are very laborious survey techniques designed to recover every tiny piece of fossil on the ground. At the Pliocene locality at...
Little time left at base
I'm enjoying the last days in our base camp near the Turkwel River. Since the construction of this permanent compound by the Turkana Basin Institute, the...
The world is 3-dimensional
Upon request and out of gratitude for the visiting rights, I'm delighted to present two seminars for staff of the National Museums of Kenya closely relat...
A boy from Turkana
Yes, I'm actually holding the original cranium of one of the most famous fossils in the world. It's a male boy, catchily nicknamed "Turkana Boy&...
Farewells
My one-year stay in Africa is coming to a close. The day has arrived for saying farewell to my colleagues and friends at the Museum. It has been a terrific t...
Sponsored Article
Most Popular related to Paleoanthropology & Paleontology
Most Popular related to Travel
