Day 12 (July 7, 2011): ‘Conserving the Cradle’
John and David were accompanied by 4 others. And although I was dusty from several hours at Site 15, I immediately joined in on the conversation. I wanted to hear about the latest developments of the Olorgesailie Conservancy, yet our guests all wanted to hear first about the finds at Site 15. Our team had just recorded several hundred fossil bones and teeth of microfauna – the rodents, frogs, lizards, and tiny bits of bird bone from a layer immediately above the target soil that contains many stone tools. It’s intriguing, I told them, the target soil at Site 15 represented an ancient grassland and wetland about 990,000 years old where early human toolmakers were incredibly active with butchery and plant food processing. Yet in the layer just above the soil, we’ve found only a single small stone flake and all of that fossil microfauna. When we start studying it in detail, the microfauna will tell us a lot about the habitat in the layer above the soil – and perhaps give us a clue as to why the early humans had suddenly abandoned that once-attractive place on the old landscape.
Anyway, I had the pleasure of meeting for the first time Dave Jenike, head of the Cincinnati Zoo. Dave’s working with SORALO to develop wildlife exhibitions at the community resource center already built 50 km or so to the southwest of Olorgesailie, at a place called Olkerimatian. Our other three guests are the talented young people conducting wildlife research, running the logistics, and helping create the education programs at the Olkerimatian Conservancy.
SORALO looks to our project for two reasons. First, we are representatives of the National Museums in the area. We are the longest running research project in what is now the entire conservancy area. And so we can help the Smithsonian and the Kenya Museums combine forces to carry out biodiversity surveys, promote conservation biology training for the local people, and help in building the community resource center. Second, our research focuses on the long-term picture of environmental change and human interaction with the surroundings. We get this information, of course, from the geological and archeological record. But our ideas about the past link to an understanding of the present and future. SORALO is very excited about this big picture, especially our study of past biodiversity, and how it lays the groundwork for understanding the changing grasslands and biodiversity of the immediate future.