Take me back to paradise City

In the SCALE lab, we have many new projects that are about to take off. My research didn’t start in the mountains of Georgia, rather in the waters of Lake Turkana…

My project stems from fieldwork I did this summer in East Turkana, Kenya. I willingly spent a little over 6 weeks living in a tent and taking less than 30 or so showers in order to participate in the Koobi Fora Field School. I learned about the fields of Anthropology, Archeology, and Paleoecology while working alongside some of the greatest minds in those respected fields. My particular project was titled: “Evolution of the East Turkana ecosystem between 2.0-1.4 Mya as indicated by stable carbon and oxygen isotopes in mammalian enamel”.

Days in Kenya started around 6am (which is 11pm EST…); breakfast was ready by 6:30 am, morning meeting started around 7:15am, and around 8:00am (when the instant coffee was finally starting to kick in) we were loading up the Land Rovers and Unimog to head into the field for the day. Team Paleoecology would usually venture to a new area every day and sample from what had eroded from sediment onto the surface. Most collections consisted of mammalian molars or premolars, which was beneficial for all projects going on in team Paleoecology. I used our collections and previous datasets to determine if there were any shifts in the diets of these mammals from 2.0-1.4 million years ago. Around 12:00pm, after being in the field all morning and coming up to the hottest part of the day, we would load back up and head to camp for lunch.

Fast-forward to now, back in Georgia. I’m continuing to work with the datasets to analyze and determine trends in the diets of these fossilized mammalian teeth, and to see how it compares to other research conducted in this time frame as well, like faunal abundance and soil isotope data. It’s not as exciting as being in the outcrops, but it’s this stage where the data gets their meaning. This is phase in which we get to see a previously existing ecosystem come back to life.

Sitting here on a brisk October day in the comfort of my own home, I miss Kenya. The days were long and hard, and I would be lying if I said I never felt down or struggled mentally while out of the country, but the good outweighed the bad 100-fold. Continuing to work on the data and preparing to present this research takes me back to the moment I found my first fossilized tooth in the field. I wouldn’t have changed a moment of this summer, and I would go back in a heartbeat.

Until then, here I am. Applying to graduate programs and trying to finish up all my undergraduate courses. Reality isn’t quite as nice as taking a dip in Lake Turkana after a long day of research, though. It was my paradise, my escape, and hopefully I’ll escape back there someday.