From the Field: Wrapping Up a Terrific Season

Friday, July 29 10:00 am

Nairobi, Kenya, July 19, 2011

Here is the whole Rusinga team on the last day of field work. Photo courtesy of W. Harcourt-Smith.

So we’re finally back in Nairobi, having packed up camp and driven back the 300-odd miles from Rusinga to the nation’s capital. It was a terrific field season, in many ways the best we’ve had. We had a really fun and motivated field crew and found a lot of wonderful fossils. What more could one ask?

Now begins the hard work of sorting out everything we found. In our case this means working in the National Museums of Kenya’s exquisite paleontology collections in Nairobi. Any fossils found in the country are reposited here, making it an ideal place to conduct comparative work. We’ve been here about a week, and it is still an overwhelming task. I’m not complaining though. It’s a fine position to be in; I’d rather we had too many than too few fossils.

So far we reckon we have about 1,200 specimens or so, which isn’t bad for three weeks’ work in the field. These range from partial skeletons to isolated teeth, and one of the big tasks right now is going through everything, arranging for it to be cleaned and prepared if needed, and then working out which taxon each specimen belongs to. In some cases we can do this to species level, but in other cases it’s very hard, especially if we think we have a new species. Go to 2 or 3 million years ago on the African savannah, and most of the creatures are more or less similar to what you’d see there today. Back in the early Miocene it’s a whole different world, and there are plenty of weird and wonderful animals that have no real analogues today. I love this aspect of the project, but it can make it a lot harder when you’re trying to identify fossils. Read more »

From the Field: Fossil Leaves and Mammals

Thursday, July 14 1:35 pm

AMNH Science Bulletins producer Sandya Viswanathan interviews site co-director Holly Dunsworth and her student Catya Mesyef. Photo courtesy of W. Harcourt-Smith.

Blogging from west Kenya, William Harcourt-Smith, a research associate in the Division of Paleontology, is directing a 20-million-year-old paleontological site on two islands in Lake Victoria. One of these islands, Rusinga, is best known as the site of the discovery of the first fossils of Proconsul, an early ape. Harcourt-Smith’s multidisciplinary team includes physical anthropologists and geologists, and in addition to collecting fossils, researchers are trying to learn more about the evolutionary events and environmental conditions that may have influenced the emergence of Proconsul and other early ape lineages.

Rusinga Island, Kenya, July 12, 2011

It’s late and I’m sitting outside my tent looking across Lake Victoria. There are thousands of tiny lights along the horizon, as far as you can see. It’s the local fishermen using lamps to attract a small species of fish that’s a staple of the local diet. It’s a beautiful sight—something I never tire of seeing.

Yesterday, the crew from Science Bulletins, the Museum’s innovative online and exhibition program, arrived in camp. Led by Sandya Viswanathan, they’re shooting a feature about our projects on Rusinga. Today they filmed the excavations at Kaswanga, and lots of team members spoke to the camera about what they were working on, some for the first time. The piece will eventually go up in the Museum’s Spitzer Hall of Human Origins, and will be syndicated to other institutions around the world. It’s exciting, and personally I’m thrilled, as it will help generate a better understanding of why we are working here and why it’s such a special place. Read more »

From the Field: Stunning Specimens from Kaswanga and More

Wednesday, July 06 9:30 am

A fossil crocodile bone being excavated as Kaswanga. Photo courtesy of W. Harcourt-Smith.

Blogging from west Kenya, William Harcourt-Smith, a research associate in the Division of Paleontology, is directing a 20-million-year-old paleontological site on two islands in Lake Victoria. One of these islands, Rusinga, is best known as the site of the discovery of the first fossils of Proconsul, an early ape. Harcourt-Smith’s multidisciplinary team includes physical anthropologists and geologists, and in addition to collecting fossils, researchers are trying to learn more about the evolutionary events and environmental conditions that may have influenced the emergence of Proconsul and other early ape lineages.

Rusinga Island, Kenya, July 2, 2011

So I’m sitting right now at a new locality called Gumba.  It’s a beautiful spot—a natural bowl of fossil-bearing exposures overlooking the lake and nearby Mfangano Island. I love coming here, even though it’s not as big or prolific as some of the other places we go. We thought we’d pay it a quick visit to see if there were any decent fossils exposed since last year.

It’s a strange place, totally different from the other localities on the island.  We find lots and lots of large animals—extinct rhinos, curious knuckle-walking relatives of horses called Chalicotheres—but very few smaller animals like rodents or primates. So far today we’ve found numerous remains of immense turtles and tortoises, a few pieces of crocodile, and some nice hyrax teeth. The crocodile remains suggest the area must have been fairly wet back in the Miocene. Geologically, Gumba is quite a conundrum. The locality is bounded by fault lines, and it’s hard to tell if it’s older or younger than the other fossil-bearing sites on Rusinga. More fossil finds should help answer that question. Read more »

From the Field: Fossil Hunting Begins

Tuesday, June 28 2:03 pm

The team begins the first day of fossil hunting at the Kiahera site on Rusinga Island. Photo courtesy of W. Harcourt-Smith.

Blogging from west Kenya, William Harcourt-Smith, a research associate in the Division of Paleontology, is directing a 20-million-year-old paleontological site on two islands in Lake Victoria. One of these islands, Rusinga, is best known as the site of the discovery of the first fossils of Proconsul, an early ape. Harcourt-Smith’s multidisciplinary team includes physical anthropologists and geologists, and in addition to collecting fossils, researchers are trying to learn more about the evolutionary events and environmental conditions that may have influenced the emergence of Proconsul and other early ape lineages.

Rusinga Island, Kenya, June 26, 2011

So we’ve been here about a week, and things are going really well. We got to Rusinga in record time, set up camp, and are now hunting for fossils in earnest. The first few days we re-visited a number of localities near camp. The closest is called Kaswanga and is famous for producing a number of partial skeletons of Proconsul in the 1980s. This year we’re scouring the site for every little scrap of bone, irrespective of whether we know which animal it came from. Then we’re mapping them using state-of-the-art laser range-finding technology.  This may sound a little odd, but there’s a good reason for it. We’re trying to reconstruct how the site formed, and to find out whether there was any bias in the way animals were preserved, or, for that matter, in which fossils were collected. We call the study of site formation taphonomy, and it’s hugely important if you want to try and accurately reconstruct what the ancient environment was like. Read more »

From the Field: Heading Out to Rusinga Island

Tuesday, June 21 10:22 am

Will Harcourt-Smith gets a vehicle ready for the field. Photo: W. Harcourt-Smith.

Blogging from west Kenya, William Harcourt-Smith, a research associate in the Division of Paleontology, is directing a 20-million-year-old paleontological site on two islands in Lake Victoria. One of these islands, Rusinga, is best known as the site of the discovery of the first fossils of Proconsul, an early ape. Harcourt-Smith’s multidisciplinary team includes physical anthropologists and geologists, and in addition to collecting fossils, researchers are trying to learn more about the evolutionary events and environmental conditions that may have influenced the emergence of Proconsul and other early ape lineages.

Nairobi, Kenya, June 18, 2011

I’ve been in Kenya about a week and things are finally coming together. As anyone who works in the expeditionary world will tell you, it’s always a bit chaotic before you leave, and the run-up can sometimes feel a bit like preparing for a military campaign. There are permits to obtain, supplies to procure, vehicles to hire, and a myriad of other little things to get ready. And, of course, as paleontologists there are all sorts of strange extras that you have to hunt down: plaster and bandages to package fossils, specimen bags, rock hammers, and the like.

Perhaps most importantly, everyone on our team is here. We have people from all over the world, from senior scientists to undergraduates coming on their first expedition. Tomorrow we’ll drive west from Nairobi, down the giant eastern escarpment of the Great Rift Valley, and then up the other side until we reach Lake Victoria. These days the roads are pretty good, and it should take about eight hours or so.

Our destination is called Rusinga Island. It sits in the Kenyan waters of the lake, and is one of the most important fossil sites in Africa.  For one, the island produces an incredibly rich and diverse array of fossil organisms, including delicate plant and seed remains, tiny rodents and lizards, giant ancestors of today’s elephants and rhinos, and even exquisitely preserved fossil insects. Read more »