Read Online The Next Species: The Future of Evolution in the Aftermath of Man by Michael Tennesen - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Michael Tennesen
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institutions here. The Leakey family made Olduvai Gorge famous beginning in the 1930s with unique findings of various species of hominids. Much of the attention devoted to this place was brought by those hoping to find similar fossils and similar fame.
At our camp, scientists from all over the globe rose with me to welcome the sun and start the workday. Our field site comprised a number of corrugated metal buildings and tents that were the base camp for about twenty anthropologists and paleontologists and their Maasai tribal assistants. We consumed a hearty breakfast of millet, porridge, eggs, fresh-baked bread, assorted fruits, and lots of coffee before we got into a half dozen safari vehicles and headed out for the day.
Leslea Hlusko, a professor of paleontology at the University of California, Berkeley, drove our safari vehicle in a caravan with several others past the field site of the Spanish scientists, who waved at our car. The Spaniards acted friendly, but Hlusko assured me there was a competitive fervor among the various international groups at Olduvai. Everyone wants to make a difference, but with the history of historic finds credited to this place, it is hard to find room in the spotlight.
Hlusko is codirector of the Olduvai Vertebrate Paleontology Project, which is trying to develop an online database of fossils so that scientists can readily access past projects and know where fossils are stored. “We want to make the data from the projects available to everyone, and also let them know where the fossils are located, whether they be in a museum in London or in someone’s basement in Florida,” said Hlusko.
Hlusko was also trying to identify the genetics in the fossils, utilizing a unique reverse analysis. Part of her past work had been with captive groups of baboons in the United States,studying their teeth and then identifying what genes were responsible for their placement, size, enamel, and dental surfaces. Hlusko hoped to study the fossils here and then to determine the genes behind the baboon teeth, including complementary characteristics in other parts of the body that those genes might have turned on. “We know a lot of hominids and early primates just by their teeth or some part of the jaw—particularly as you go further back in time,” Hlusko pointed out.
The project was interested in the effects animals in this ecosystem had on the hominids who were once here with them. At one time the Olduvai Gorge area was a place where animals interacted with man in a balanced community. We saw that some of this balance still exists today, since this area is surrounded by national parks.
We continued traveling along the ridge of the gorge until we came to a plateau where the team parked its vehicles and the men and women aboard prepared to go to work. As you looked out over the gorge, you could see the layers of earth in the sides of the canyon. We were fortunate enough to have these well-defined layers, which Hlusko said made it possible to determine the era of a fossil by the stratigraphy of the soil. The group of scientists and Maasai helpers spread out over the sloping side of one section of the canyon. I learned to avoid those climbing precipices after I followed one group up a pinnacle and had trouble getting down.
That morning, we found the lower jaw of an ancient mastodon, and Hlusko spent more than an hour extracting it from the ground, carefully packing it into a plaster mold to take back to camp. She explained that she normally avoided hippo and elephant bones because they don’t appear to evolve as much as man or some of the other carnivores. But this elephant jaw was so intact that she justcouldn’t resist.
Later that week the project’s codirector, Jackson Njau, took me to his study site in Serengeti National Park along the Grumeti River. Like Hlusko, Njau was interested in how animals related to early man, but he had chosen to focus specifically oncrocodiles and their possible effect
At our camp, scientists from all over the globe rose with me to welcome the sun and start the workday. Our field site comprised a number of corrugated metal buildings and tents that were the base camp for about twenty anthropologists and paleontologists and their Maasai tribal assistants. We consumed a hearty breakfast of millet, porridge, eggs, fresh-baked bread, assorted fruits, and lots of coffee before we got into a half dozen safari vehicles and headed out for the day.
Leslea Hlusko, a professor of paleontology at the University of California, Berkeley, drove our safari vehicle in a caravan with several others past the field site of the Spanish scientists, who waved at our car. The Spaniards acted friendly, but Hlusko assured me there was a competitive fervor among the various international groups at Olduvai. Everyone wants to make a difference, but with the history of historic finds credited to this place, it is hard to find room in the spotlight.
Hlusko is codirector of the Olduvai Vertebrate Paleontology Project, which is trying to develop an online database of fossils so that scientists can readily access past projects and know where fossils are stored. “We want to make the data from the projects available to everyone, and also let them know where the fossils are located, whether they be in a museum in London or in someone’s basement in Florida,” said Hlusko.
Hlusko was also trying to identify the genetics in the fossils, utilizing a unique reverse analysis. Part of her past work had been with captive groups of baboons in the United States,studying their teeth and then identifying what genes were responsible for their placement, size, enamel, and dental surfaces. Hlusko hoped to study the fossils here and then to determine the genes behind the baboon teeth, including complementary characteristics in other parts of the body that those genes might have turned on. “We know a lot of hominids and early primates just by their teeth or some part of the jaw—particularly as you go further back in time,” Hlusko pointed out.
The project was interested in the effects animals in this ecosystem had on the hominids who were once here with them. At one time the Olduvai Gorge area was a place where animals interacted with man in a balanced community. We saw that some of this balance still exists today, since this area is surrounded by national parks.
We continued traveling along the ridge of the gorge until we came to a plateau where the team parked its vehicles and the men and women aboard prepared to go to work. As you looked out over the gorge, you could see the layers of earth in the sides of the canyon. We were fortunate enough to have these well-defined layers, which Hlusko said made it possible to determine the era of a fossil by the stratigraphy of the soil. The group of scientists and Maasai helpers spread out over the sloping side of one section of the canyon. I learned to avoid those climbing precipices after I followed one group up a pinnacle and had trouble getting down.
That morning, we found the lower jaw of an ancient mastodon, and Hlusko spent more than an hour extracting it from the ground, carefully packing it into a plaster mold to take back to camp. She explained that she normally avoided hippo and elephant bones because they don’t appear to evolve as much as man or some of the other carnivores. But this elephant jaw was so intact that she justcouldn’t resist.
Later that week the project’s codirector, Jackson Njau, took me to his study site in Serengeti National Park along the Grumeti River. Like Hlusko, Njau was interested in how animals related to early man, but he had chosen to focus specifically oncrocodiles and their possible effect
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