Fossils provide the fundamental evidence of human evolution. Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania is one of the most fossiliferous and important sites for vertebrate paleontology and human evolution in East Africa. Much of the past and current research conducted at this site focuses on the stone tools and modification of bones found in excavations. This project differs from that and benefits science by focusing on the paleontology thereby contributing to knowledge of both the skeletal biology of human ancestors that lived in this region across the last two million years. In addition, the project focuses on collecting and identifying animals that are not recovered in human accumulated excavations, and as such adds information about the communities of animals that shared the landscape with them. With NSF funding the researchers are conducting three field seasons focused on recovering fossils. The field approach follows a highly systematic survey and collection protocol, and includes mapping of fossils and landscape features with high resolution satellite imagery. The second research component of the project is the compilation of a database of all of the fossils collected to date from Olduvai Gorge. This site was first discovered by scientists in 1911 and fossils have subsequently been dispersed to various collections around the world with no central database. The database significantly improves the ability of other scientists to access these collections, and enables the Tanzanian government to care for this world heritage collection.
This project also includes workshops for K-12 teachers in Arusha, Tanzania. These are coordinated with the successful K-12 workshops run by the University of California's Museum of Paleontology, opening up cross-cultural opportunities for teachers in California as well as in Tanzania. The research also provides international collaboration and training of graduate students.
All of life on Earth is the result of millions of years of evolution. Elucidating that evolutionary history helps us understand the interconnectedness of all of the various organisms alive today, an increasingly important endeavor as we work to improve our lives and those of our children to come. This NSF funded project had three specific aims designed to improve our understanding of the last 2 million years of evolution in eastern Africa, where the earliest members of our genus, Homo evolved. The first aim was to vastly improve the curation of data collected over the last 100 years from Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. Various scientists from different countries directed research projects at Olduvai Gorge over the last century, resulting in the fossils from the site being distributed across at least 10 institutions on three continents, most with no formal record keeping. We compiled an on-line database of approximately 10,000 fossils collected from Olduvai Gorge, representing the first relatively comprehensive inventory of this irreplaceable record of evolution. This inventory is available on-line at www.olduvai-paleo.org, free for the public, scientists, educators, and governmental officials alike to access. The second aim of this project was to extend the fossil collection through additional field work. The eastern and western ends of the Gorge received relatively little paleontological attention prior to this project. We conducted a systematic survey, recording very specific stratigraphic and dGPS location for each fossil collected. The geological sequence at Olduvai Gorge has been significantly refined since fossils were collected in previous decades. As such, our new collections improve the stratigraphic context for those earlier collections as we can compare which animals are found in which horizons, more confidently intuiting where fossils with uncertain provenience were likely discovered. While we recovered a bone from the forearm of one of our ancestors who lived 1 million years ago, our more important scientific discovery is the extensive collection of fossil animals living at Olduvai at 1.9 million years ago, the earliest part of the geological record at Olduvai. This is the time period during which our genus, Homo evolved, and a time period at the Gorge for which we knew the least about (as these oldest sediments are not well-exposed in most parts of the Gorge). We do not have NSF funding for the analytical stage of this project, and as such, that work will be completed on a volunteer basis by a team of scientists over the next year. The third aim of this project was to enhance high school level science instruction in the Arusha District of Tanzania, where the research was performed. Through collaboration with the Director of the National Natural History Museum in Arusha, we organized a series of nine 2-day workshops for high school science teachers. These workshops provided teachers with the opportunity to brain-storm ways to teach science under their local situations (with very limited resources) and to make connections with other teachers, raising enthusiasm and motivation. Educational use of the National Natural History Museum in Arusha has increased as a result of the workshops, and many of the teachers have formed a club through which they keep in touch and share ideas and inspiration. Over the four years of this grant our educational impacts have included high school, undergraduate, graduate students, and a postdoctoral researcher. Three graduate students from the University of California Berkeley, four from Indiana University, and six students from the University of Dar es Salam received significant field training at Olduvai Gorge. Two University of California Berkeley graduate students were supported for a year of their graduate studies while they assisted with the compilation of the database, simultaneously learning data curation skills and developing their professional networks at the national and international levels. Five undergraduate students at the University of California Berkeley assisted with the database as well. One postdoctoral researcher studied part of the newly recovered fossil material. And last but not least, through the 148 science teachers who participated in the workshops in Arusha, countless high school students in Tanzania have also been positively impacted by this funding. The teacher workshops and the database efforts were met with tremendously positive reactions from the governmental agencies and officials within Tanzania. The teacher workshops were unprecedented, but have since inspired other research projects to develop educational outreach activities that stretch beyond one-time museum exhibits or scientific lectures. On the research side, the database is a significant effort to rectify practices by previous foreign scientists that undermined the development of infrastructure in Tanzania. The government officials were deeply appreciative of our recognition of the problem and efforts to correct it. We are in talks with the Tanzanian officials to arrange the transfer of the website and database to the appropriate agency in-country.
