John Rowan: Ledi-Gareru #2—Through Kenya and Tanzania to Ethiopia

Editor’s Note: John has extensive research and field experience. Below is a bit of his story and a little more on what is happening in Ethiopia on this trip.

Issa woman and baby from Tanzania travels.

Last summer, I was invited to participate in the Koobi Fora Field School operated by Rutgers University, George Washington University, and the National Museums of Kenya. On the Laikipai Plateau, I helped lecture on paleoecology with Dr. René Bobe. René and I used the modern Kenyan ecosystem to teach students about taphonomic processes, preservation biases in the fossil record, how to calculate species diversity and abundance from fragmentary remains, and how to identify scraps of bone to the family level. From there, the field school moved north to the eastern shores of Lake Turkana, an area famous for its hominin-rich fossil localities.

Teaching in Kenya with Dr. Rene Bobe

At Koobi Fora Base Camp, I lectured on vertebrate paleontology and evolution, exposing anthropologically centered students to a whirlwind tour of 550 million years of vertebrate history. After a week of lecturing, we moved two hours further north along the lake to Ileret, a Pleistocene locality famous for its preservation of Homo erectus footprints. In this last leg of the field school, I assisted Dr. Brian Richmond with the uncovering of more H.erectus footprint layers and the collection of new hominin fossils. With Dr. Kay Behrensmeyer, I helped direct the paleontology team that will provide the ecological context for the environment in which early Homo erectus was living in 1.5 mya.

 

Cataloging fossils at Ledi-Gareru 2013

In fall 2012, I entered the evolutionary anthropology PhD program at Arizona State University as Dr. Kaye Reed’s student. Since arriving at ASU, I have directed my research towards understanding the evolution of terrestrial mammal communities in Africa during the latest Miocene (~ 10 to 5 mya) and Pliocene (~ 5 to 2.6 mya). This spatiotemporal setting is important because various climatic factors and faunal migrations into and out of Africa “set the stage” that human evolution eventually played out on (molecular and fossil data suggest that Hominini originated ~ 7 mya). Of all the various fossil localities, the Afar depression and Turkana Basin are perhaps the two most important regions within the entirety of Africa for piecing together the human story. So, my current research interests are in the alpha taxonomy (species recognition and differentiation), phylogeny (evolutionary relationships), and biogeography (distribution) of East African mammals from the Turkana Basin of Kenya and southern Ethiopia and the Afar region of Ethiopia. Through this research I will be able to help define the broader environmental context of human origins in Africa.

John with Ethiopian-born IHO doctoral student Chalachew Seyoum at the Ledi-Gareru site

Now, back to today—since my last post, we’ve uncovered a lot more fossils, the geologists and archaeologists have arrived (finally), and we’ve entered the home stretch for this field season. In the next few days I’ll shoot over another post on what’s actually going on in camp—things have gotten hectic around here as the days dwindle. I have lots of exciting stories to tell, but for now, I have to get back to surveying for fossils!

Cheers!

John

John Rowan: Ledi-Geraru, Hadar, Ethiopia

Note from the Editor: This begins the newest entry from our “Notes from the Field” series, this time written by one of IHO’s newest doctoral students, John Rowan. In upcoming entries, you will hear more about John’s research interests. I am so interested to hear about what IHO researchers and the international team of scientists are doing in Ledi-Geraru—and I am happy to bring you that news from John.

Greetings from the Afar of Ethiopia—this entry comes from our campsite in the arid scrubland of the Ledi-Geraru research area.

Welcome to Hadar!

I arrived in Addis Ababa in late December and spent a few weeks working in the National Museum of Ethiopia on Pliocene faunal collections with IHO professor Kaye Reed. The museum was lively as preeminent scientists like Terry Harrison and Yohannes Haile-Selassie were working in the research collections or preparing to head out into the field.

John in front of the “Lucy” site plaque

The 2013 field season for the Ledi-Geraru Research Project kicked off on January 9 as we packed up and made the eight-hour trek from Addis Ababa to the Afar. Our team here includes Kaye Reed (IHO/ASU), Ramon Arrowsmith (ASU), Brian Villmoare (George Washington University), David Feary (ASU), three ASU PhD students (Erin DiMaggio, Chalachew Seyoum, and Dominique Garello), and local Afar workers (including the famous Omar Abdullah). The rest of our crew arrives at the end of the month and includes Chris Campisano (IHO/ASU), Lars Werdelin (Swedish Museum of Natural History), and Dave Braun (George Washington University). Every participant forms a different piece of a larger puzzle as we try to collectively reconstruct human evolution in East Africa using lines of evidence from geology, paleontology, and archaeology.

Our current focus is to investigate new fossiliferous exposures that should help fill a significant gap in our understanding of human evolution in East Africa. In the Afar, the Hadar Formation ranges from 3.5mya—2.95mya and is overlain by the Busidima Formation from 2.7mya—160,000ybp; however, sediments ranging from 2.95—2.7mya are missing from the sequence due to an unconformity. For paleoanthropologists, this small slice of time is of great importance because it may be the time when our genus, Homo, originates. To throw light on the origin of Homo, the Ledi-Geraru Research Project was initiated by the late Charlie Lockwood, Kaye Reed, and Ramon Arrowsmith in 2002 as an attempt to clarify the transition from Australopithecus and the emergence of Paranthropus (a bizarre evolutionary off-shoot of robust hominins) and Homo. Along with the earliest members of our own genus, the first stone tools may have appeared during this time period.

New discoveries!

The field is always an exciting place of discovery—so far we’ve already deduced that the animals we’re finding in the Ledi-Geraru research area are very different from those at Hadar. In the Hadar Formation, the uppermost deposits demonstrate a general trend towards a more open and arid environment—a change that is in sync with increasing robusticity in Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy’s species). But, as noted above, after 2.95mya, we’re not sure what became of Au. afarensis or the animals with which it shared the landscape with. Ledi-Geraru is showing us that there may have been ecological changes in the Afar around 2.8mya similar to those documented in the Omo-Turkana Basin of northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia. We’ve uncovered new monkeys, bovids, hippos, and other mammalian taxa that may represent immigrants into the Afar from other areas or new and unique species that have evolved from the older Hadar fauna.

That’s all for now—more to come soon!

Cheers!
John

Thierra Nalley: Another View from the Field #5—Paris, France

Bonjour!

Greetings from Paris! I had two work goals this week. The first was to fill in a few gaps in my extant primate sample with a small number of difficult-to-find primate species, particularly certain lemurs such as sifakas (Propithecus diadema) and indris (Indri indri), at the Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle. Unexpectedly, and continuing the theme of community from previous posts, I ran into another IHO graduate student here in the comparative collection—Emily Hallett, a PhD student of Dr. Curtis Marean. She is preparing for her six-month data collection trip at an early modern human site in Morocco. Did I mention “we” are everywhere? The phrase “My name is IHO, we are many” comes to mind.

Anyway, the comparative collection is located in a large, square room with an open ceiling full of skylights. The walls are lined with wooden drawers from floor to ceiling, complete with a twisting staircase to reach the upper loft. In addition to primates, other animal groups are also housed here: bats, birds, and the occasional lion. The natural light and openness of the room are worth mentioning, because for the most part, the osteological collections I have been working in have kept me in small, windowless rooms with florescent bulbs. This area was a nice breath of fresh air.

My second goal was to measure two Neandertal specimens for my fossil sample from the collections of the Musée de l’Homme. The Kebara 2 skeleton includes a complete set of cervical vertebrae (1–7) and represents a more eastern population of Neandertals, discovered at a site in Israel. The more well-known La Ferrassie skeleton also has a complete set of cervical vertebrae and represents the classic Western European Neandertals found at a site here in France. Unfortunately, as a graduate student, I am not able to hold and measure the fossil specimens. Who can handle fossil material varies across collections and institutions, and this particular collection is one of the few with such strict policies. Thus my Neandertal measurements were acquired from high-quality casts of the specimens. It is perhaps not ideal, but it will work for my purposes.

My stay in Paris has also allowed me to practice my limited French, as the researchers and students I came into contact with varied considerably in their English-speaking abilities. The vast majority spoke better English than my French, so I think communication was pretty successful. I am headed back to the States at the beginning of July and will be spending three weeks in NYC at the American Museum of Natural History. Let’s see if I run into any ASU/IHO folks there!

Au revoir,

Thierra

Thierra Nalley: Another View from the Field #4—Nairobi, Kenya

Greetings from Kenya!

This is my first time to Nairobi, and I’m sorry to be spending only three nights here in the city. I have little time but to work at the museum during the day and watch rugby cup matches on the TV at night while I format data. Ironically, I am spending the least amount of time at this museum, but it took the most effort, paperwork, and money to gain access to the Australopithecus (Paranthropus) boisei and Homo erectus specimens housed here.

Serendipitously, I was able to add a fun bonus to my fossil sample with a few recently published Miocene hominoid specimens that date to about 15 million years ago (mya). The Japanese researchers who discovered and described Nacholapithecus kerioi were very gracious, allowing me to measure the fossil vertebrae before they were even moved from their “unpublished” field bags to the “published” shelving in the museum fossil vault.

This step in fossil curation is currently what Dr. Kimbel is doing with some newly published Hadar material in Addis Ababa. I am very excited to add this particular fossil species to my sample because it may represent a “transitional” form; its morphology suggests some of the earliest suspensory adaptations in the hominoid (apes and humans) fossil record. If the locomotor hypotheses in my dissertation are supported, than I can apply them to ancient hominoids such as Nacholapithecus kerioi and help us understand when suspensory locomotion evolved in the hominoid lineage. This is an important question to many paleoanthropologists because it would help establish if suspensory locomotion evolved independently in the orangutan, gorilla, and chimpanzee lineages or if it is a shared trait of all hominoid ancestors (including hominins). Understanding when suspensory locomotion evolved lets researchers know if it should be incorporated into the context of our own species’ evolution.

My hotel is a five-minute walk to the museum and the hotel grounds are surrounded by deceptively lush gardens. Once outside the hotel compound, however, the quick stroll to the museum is a drastic shift from decadence to a developing urban center. It is a relatively safe neighborhood with a large amount of foot traffic to the nearby university. But I do not have a picture illustrating the change in scenery, as I did not want to push my luck taking out a camera. Carrying the 3D digitizer in a hard-cased rollaway is already enough “stuff” to draw attention to myself.

I leave for Paris tomorrow, and I am looking forward to staying in a rented flat where I can walk around a bit more when I am not at the museum. Not to say that I do not love working in and visiting Africa. It of course comes with its own set of special travel issues, especially for a woman travelling alone; but when I can see Mt. Kilimanjaro poking through the clouds from my airplane window and hold a 15 mya fossil vertebra in my hand the following day, well, experiences such as these make working in Africa pretty wonderful.

Thierra

Thierra Nalley: Another View from the Field #3—South Africa

Hello!

As I mentioned in my previous post, my next stop is in lovely South Africa (SA), which is currently in the grips of winter and quite chilly. The goal of this trip is to visit the Ditsong (formerly known as the Transvaal) Museum of Natural History. Some of the earliest discovered and most famous hominins are from the South African sites Sterkfontein, Swartkrans, and Kromdraai and are stored at the Ditsong Museum. But before I get to business, the theme of community continues as I meet up with ASU/IHO alums Drs. Laura Bidner and Amy Rector–Verrelli for a few days of adventure. Dr. Rector-Verrelli is a paleoecologist and is currently faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is running a South African summer program for a group of undergraduate students. Dr. Bidner is a primatologist and has a postdoctoral position at the University of Fort Hare here in SA. Since we were all so close at the same time, Dr. Rector-Verrelli invited Dr. Bidner and myself to accompany her and her students to Kruger National Park to see some of Africa’s famous wildlife and perhaps give the students different perspectives in biological anthropology. And holy crap, the day drives through the park were successful—sometimes also most too successful (rhinos are especially grouchy when there are babies in the herd). Even our camp was alive with wildlife. There were bushbabies and fruit bats in the trees at night and vervet monkeys and warthogs in the mornings, both attempting to get into the trash. All in all it was very exciting and fun to experience the park with friends and colleagues.

I left Dr. Rector-Verrelli’s group as they were headed to Capetown and to later visit the IHO crew currently excavating at Mossel Bay. Dr. Bidner traveled back to her baboon troop in the mountains of Hogsback, and I got a ride to Pretoria and the Ditsong Museum. The museum is currently being renovated, so its full glory is unfortunately under dust and scaffolding, but the sense of history here cannot be ignored. The hominin vault, also known as “The Broom Room,” is filled with tall cases made of glass and wood, the shelves are lined with red velvet, and this small room has a distinct Old-World feel. And as I mentioned, some of the most famous hominin fossils are stored here as well as the relics of their discoverers. Dr. Robert Broom was an advocate of human origins in Africa (when at the time the field was also considering Asia) and the discovery of the Mrs. Ples skull (STS 5) aided in the paradigm shift started by Raymond Dart and his description of the South African Taung child fossil in 1924. Another pioneer, Dr. C.K. (Bob) Brain, is also present, whose continued work at Swartkrans until the late 1980s helped to develop the modern day study of taphonomy (how organic remains transition to fossils).

The museum staff is lovely, and I am setup at a desk surrounded by skeletons of African animals. There only a few Australopithecus (Paranthropus) robustus cervical vertebrae, but they are nicely preserved. Australopithecus africanus has a frustratingly large number of vertebrae, but alas, none are from the cervical spine. I chose to get them out anyway, just to see the famous STS 14 skeleton and of course take notes on the vertebral morphology.

That is it for this trip! I have a brief stop in Nairobi, Kenya before I am off to Paris, France. The whirlwind museum tour continues!

Take care,

Thierra

Thierra Nalley: Another View from the Field #2—Addis Ababa

Hello again!

This post is written from the busy city of Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia. This is my second trip to Addis and familiar scents hit me the moment I step off the plane: charcoal, spice, and sweat. My trip has been made easier by accompanying Dr. Bill Kimbel during his visit to complete some curation work at the Natural History Museum and prep for the upcoming field season in October.

I am able to stay at the IHO house (new water heater = hot showers with water pressure people!!) and am lucky enough to be back in the company of the invaluable Mesfin Mekonen, the local liaison in Addis. Bill also comes in handy when one tries to get digitizers through customs. The digitizer is an electronic piece of equipment that really looks more impressive than it is, with a mechanical arm that unfolds and can record points on a fossil or bone, which then saves the point to a computer as XYZ coordinates. This equipment is great for measuring angles between bony features. My amateurish attempts with the customs agents were going nowhere fast, and it looked as if I was going to have to pay a tax on the digitizer’s value to get the equipment out of the airport. Fortunately Bill had enough finesse and documentation (which I don’t have for Ethiopia since I am on Bill’s research permit, but do for South Africa and Kenya—so keep your fingers crossed for my solo journeys there) to get me and my equipment through. Phew.

The day of arrival was spent getting the IHO house in order for Bill’s three-week stay, but also getting over the seven-hour time difference and accompanying jetlag (i.e., lots of coffee and well-timed naps).

My short stay in Ethiopia was only for three full days, so the second and third were spent entirely at the museum. This was more than enough time to complete my data collection because there are currently only three specimens I can actually access for my dissertation. Hopefully, that will change in the coming years as discovered, by not yet fully described, specimens from other sites are published (and thus available for other researchers). The hominin vault was still under construction when I was last here in 2009. The building is now complete and is very impressive. The workspace is first class, and the atmosphere was jovial since there seemed to be a steady stream of people coming into chat and catch up with Bill and Mesfin.

Working with hominin fossils is very exciting, and I am not alone in this feeling. A group of American and Italian paleobotanists came by to say “Hello” and asked if they could peek at some of the Hadar material. Many “oohs” and “ahhs” were had as well as a brief discussion about hominin diets and what plants might be considered relevant. Classic botanists.

I was happy to be back in Addis and am comfortable with the differences in everyday life. I do wish though that I had a better grasp (or more accurately, any grasp) of the Amharic language. I know a handful of phrases to keep from being rude and most people in the city speak enough English that we can get by, but the language barrier keeps me keenly aware of my ferenji (white foreigner) status. If I were lucky enough to eventually work at my own site in Ethiopia, becoming proficient in Amharic would be at the top of my to-do list. One thing I do not look forward to, however, is driving in Addis. Anarchy reigns and I would rather drive the roadless Afar wilderness during a severe thunderstorm than navigate the treachously-populated streets of Addis Ababa.

On that note, I am off to Johannesburg, South Africa. I will be meeting up with ASU alums Drs. Laura Bidner and Amy Rector-Verrelli to tour Kruger National Park before heading to the Transvaal Museum. Cross your fingers for a pangolin sighting!

Take care,

Thierra

Thierra Nalley: Another View from the “Field”

Editor’s Note: This posting from Thierra Nalley represents another side of “field” research undertaken by IHO’s doctoral students. Just as primary field research is an important component of anthropological work, comparative analysis and lab research—which may not be as exotic or seemingly adventurous as living in a tent in the Afar—can be as satisfying and exciting to our students (and scientists)! So, here is a bit of a twist on “Notes from the Field.” I hope you enjoy it—I think you will!

Thierra  with Bill Kimbel in Hadar, 2009.  Photo courtesy Ben Reed.

Hello! My name is Thierra Nalley and I am graduate student of IHO Director, Dr. William Kimbel. My posts might be a little different (yet hopefully still informative and entertaining!) in that instead of describing experiences from “the field,” I will be recounting my travels to museums across three (possibly four) continents—the US, Europe, and Africa. I am in the final stages of my graduate degree and am collecting data for my dissertation project.

I’ll take a quick moment to briefly describe my project, if only to explain the series of vertebrae pictures you will probably see throughout these posts. In a broad sense, I am interested in the evolution of bipedality in hominins. What are the advantages of walking upright? Disadvantages? How did natural selection shape a nonbiped into the form we see in ourselves today? One way to think about these big questions is to understand what form bipedality evolved from. In other words, “What came before?” Many researchers think about this particular question in a variety of ways, and I am hoping my project will add a new perspective.

My dissertation focuses specifically on the vertebrae in the neck (the cervical spine). I’m testing the hypothesis that suspensory primates (primates that can move in the trees by using their arms alone, such as apes and spider monkeys) have very specific vertebral shapes that allow their necks to act as stable platforms for large, powerful forelimbs. To test this hypothesis, I need to measure (hundreds of) primate cervical vertebrae, both suspensory and nonsuspensory species, to see if they are indeed different in the ways that suggest a biomechanical adaptation. If this pattern is supported in living primates, than I can see if the same pattern is found in fossil hominins. If early fossil hominins look like suspensory primates, it suggests that they were also capable of suspensory locomotion. Testing hypotheses like this help provide context to the evolution of bipedality.

The first stop in my travels is Washington D.C. and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. The collections at the Smithsonian are unparalleled in many ways: large sample sizes, well-preserved specimens, and a high degree of accessibility for researchers. I will be in residence for about a month and what I have been struck by during my first few weeks here are the sense of community and history. Anthropology is a broad, wide-reaching field of study, but biological anthropology and all the little areas of expertise within it are very interconnected. Furthermore, my time as a student at Arizona State and the IHO has made me a part of an extraordinary group of people who have spread far and wide. For example, I am lucky enough to stay with an old friend that received her master’s in the ASU anthropology program who now works for the National Geographic Society and lives in the cute and happening Adams Morgan neighborhood. Fellow IHO graduate student Terry Ritzman is also in temporary residence while collecting his dissertation data, and ASU alum Dr. Matthew Tocheri is on permanent staff as a Smithsonian researcher who has recently become involved with the Flores hominins known as “hobbits.” These people add a sense of familiarity and support during this exciting (but sometimes stressful!) time on the road.

Another interesting aspect of my time at the Smithsonian is the deepening awareness of those that have come before me. Many of the primate specimens have been housed here for almost a century and many of the researchers involved with this collection have left a lasting impression on the field.

The ape skeletal sample provides a great example. Dian Fossey herself sent a large portion of the gorilla collection to the Smithsonian from Rwanda. Some are even from her own research group. This knowledge gives the gorilla specimens names and stories, even if I make them up in my head. I find this to be an interesting reaction on my part, and it makes me look forward to further encounters with the history of my field.

My next stop will be the museum in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to study the Australopithecus fossil hominins. Look for an update then!

Take care,
Thierra