Kenya Week 2 is done

Week 2 was much like Week 1, focused on working in the museum during the week. This post will basically be photos with captions.

Next week will be much more varied as it will include an overnight trip to an archaeological field site, a trip to a part of Kenya I've never been to (Baringo) where I'll be helping to facilitate a workshop for Kenyan high school biology teachers on evolution, and then finally - next Sunday - to the field site in central Kenya (Laikipia) where we'll be for the rest of our time in Kenya!

Toby marveling at all of the trays of fossils I've studied so far - everything on the left side of this photo is basically the project I'm working on

Contemplating a toy car with an elephant mandible and skull nearby... as one does

Toby with a human family tree display

Toby likes using my calipers to measure things

Toby using my hand lens to look for marks on a fossil

Jen showing Toby something on her phone during our lunch meeting (Toby and I eat lunch at the restaurant at the museum, Vogue Cafe, every day) - Jen and I study basically the same thing and collaborate on several research projects

We visited the Osteology collections, one of my favorite places in the museum, to try to identify a backbone (vertebral column) of some kind of small animal that Toby found in the grass during a "nature collection" walk - we think it's some kind of lizard

Toby showing me where he and Mercy were playing the "throw leaves in the water" game

Toby and Mercy playing a word/spelling game

Toby putting the mosquito net behind the bed after waking up in the morning

My colleague Ella arrived on Tuesday night (she's staying in the apartment with us and will go to the field with us too) here she is entertaining Toby

Saturday was full of non-museum work, organizing, and errands at the Sarit Center (basically a shopping mall) - including lunch at Java House, where Toby enjoyed his banana bread and hot chocolate

Comments

D minus a week and a day

I'm leaving for my annual migration to Kenya soon, just like the wildebeest.... well, only there's a few million less of me than there are of them. Also, I'd like to think I run in a few less circles than they do, given that they spend their year basically making a big circle between Kenya and Tanzania in the Serengeti/Mara ecosystem (though that's debatable!). I'm going through my usual 'I'm leaving soon' routine: getting together with friends who want to spend a little time before I leave for a few months; making sure I can take care of all my (as my fab friend Fire calls it) "personal admin" online while I'm gone - banking, paying utilities, etc.; adding things to the duffel bag I keep stocked during the rest of the year with my 'going to Kenya' things. It's always hectic, and no matter how well I plan - and those of you who know me know I plan! - there's always a lot to do at the last minute. So it's D (departure) mi...

a shout-out to Solomon

I just want to give a shout-out to our armed guard this year, Solomon (he's the one on the left in this 2011 research team photo). We've worked with a different guard each time we've been here and they've all been great. Solomon has a particularly good sense of humor with a great laugh; keen eyes that can see elephants from a few hundred meters away as well as bones seemingly hidden in the grass; and is always patient as we ask him questions about animal behavior and footprints while we're tromping around the bush. Thanks for keeping us safe out there, Solomon!

bones and animals

Fire and I left Nairobi at about 9:45 am yesterday and drove to Ol Pejeta Conservancy, where we're doing pilot work for what we hope will be a long term study. Our project is called BONES (it took a long time to think of that cool an acronym!): Bones of Ol Pejeta, Neotaphonomic and Ecological Survey. We have several interesting research questions which we hope to answer using a study of bones scattered across the landscape of this conservation area. One of them is this: paleontologists and archaeologists dig up fossils, and we use these fossils to reconstruct animal communities and ancient habitats. For instance, if we find 50% grassland adapted animals and 25% forest adapted animals and 25% woodland adapted animals, we use this information to look at the animal community, and reconstruct the vegetaiton. When we do this, we assume that the types of animals we find as fossils are preserved in the same proportions as in the living community they came from. But is this the case? We ca...

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