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THE THREE C'S: COLLECTION,
CATALOGING, AND CLEANING

With year-round funding, the need to prioritize which fossils to collect would be minimized but for now, each evening images are analyzed and decisions made about collection the following day. The collection team has its own GPS instrument to locate the fossils, a digital camera, aerial map and field book. Nasser Malit refers to all of this as "cool stuff" (personal communication, October 24, 2004). In the field book information is recorded manually that identifies element, species, geology, and GPS reading as a backup. A picture showing the cairn and the small flag is taken from several meters away to identify the geology. Then a close-up for fossil identification is taken to support identification. As a backup, the collection team marks the fossil's position on an aerial photo with a pinprick. This system was used for many years, but two problems were accuracy and difficulty managing the information over a number of years. Imagine the thousands of pinpricks on hundreds of aerial maps collected over three decades of digging at Koobi Fora! High tech has dramatically altered the old process and allows positive identification and a quick return to the location of fossils the team found previously.

Louise Leakey explains to Michael McGonigle how the fossil of a pig is collected.

Sophisticated equipment may start the job of collection, but then each fossil is carefully wrapped in common toilet tissue and placed securely in a plastic bag for its trip back to the base camp. For larger fossils that are partially buried, a hole much larger than the specimen must be excavated. A hardener called Bedacryl is applied on the exposed part of a fragile fossil before dental picks and artist's brushes are used to remove excess soil.

If other parts of a specimen might be located in the vicinity, searching continues, especially if the fossil is hominin (i.e., human ancestor), even though the likelihood of finding additional pieces is small. In describing the necessity of following up with a tooth, Louise wrote in a 2004 dispatch, "Sadly the remainder of this specimen is likely to have washed away a long time ago but we will have to do a hill crawl here to make quite sure of this." She described a hill crawl as "putting the team in a long line and having them work gradually across the surface turning over every stone and looking for any possible pieces. It is too big an area to screen immediately so we start this way…." (http://www.kfrp.com/dispatches_2004/dispatch11/2004dispatch11.htm)

A hill crawl and sieving (English term) or screening (American term) usually happen after lunch. They take time and the chances of turning up anything valuable are slim, but during the 2004 season one crew member found half a "worn and weathered" molar (L. Leakey, 2004 Dispatch, Week 4) and most of the other half was found when screening.

At the base camp meticulous care is taken in unwrapping the fossils. Sizzling afternoon heat provides time for each fossil to be carefully laid out in a small box, another digital image made, and numbers derived from the field book are used to tag the specimen and entered into a database. The fossils are carefully re-wrapped for storage, with hominins stored in a special wooden box.

An inventory, updated every evening, is made of fossils collected and not collected. By the end of a season several databases exist that back up one another.

Dr. Amman Madan at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, says, "There is something magical about spending hours poring over every square foot of land and then being able to pick up and hold a part of the ancient past" (personal communication, June 7, 2004).

Mike McGonigle and new friend wave goodbye.

The Leakeys: A Biography, Mary Bowman-Kruhm. ©2005 by Mary Bowman-Kruhm. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., Westport, CT.