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The Olduvai gorge is a fossil bed in Tanzania featuring hundreds of fossils that help us learn about ancient human history as well as human evolution.

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The Olduvai gorge has helped us discover several things about both human history and evolution up to several millions of years in the past. For example, just the sheer amount of fossils in Tanzania and surrounding areas can tell us that humans mainly evolved in the Africa area. The Olduvai gorge has found several skulls and human fossils to tell us about the evolutionary history of our ancestors.
Things like stone tools and the shape of their skulls can tell us about early intelligent life as well as determining the original hominids that humanity has evolved from.

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Olduvai Gorge: Oldest Evidence of Mankind's Evolution By Kim Ann Zimmermann 

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Olduvai Gorge: Oldest Evidence of Mankind's Evolution By Kim Ann Zimmermann 

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https://www.livescience.com/40455-olduvai-gorge

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(Image credit: <a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery-805819p1.html">PRILL</a> | <a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/">Shutterstock</a>)

Olduvai Gorge is a site in Tanzania that holds the earliest evidence of the existence of human ancestors. Paleoanthropologists have found hundreds of fossilized bones and stone tools in the area dating back millions of years, leading them to conclude that humans evolved in Africa.

Olduvai is a misspelling of Oldupai, a Maasai word for a wild sisal plant that grows in the area. The gorge is located in the Great Rift Valley, between the Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti National Park. It is 30 miles from Laetoli, another fossil-rich area. Olduvai Gorge was formed about 30,000 years ago, the result of aggressive geological activity and streams.

The steep ravine is about 30 miles (48.2 km) long and 295 feet (89.9 meters) deep, not quite large enough to be classified as a canyon. A river cuts through several layers to form four individual beds, with the oldest estimated at about 2 million years old.

The first family of paleontology

Louis and Mary (Nicol) Leakey are often referred to as the first family of paleontology, as much of their lives, and later the lives of their children, revolved around Olduvai Gorge. The couple met on a dig in England, and both worked briefly at the Olduvai Gorge before being married in England in 1937.

Louis was born in 1903 in Kenya, where his English parents were missionaries. He would often uncover prehistoric stone tools while he was out bird watching. After graduating from University in England, he joined a fossil-finding expedition to what is now Tanzania, which sparked his interest in human origins.

In 1930s, the Leakeys found stone tools in Olduvai and elsewhere. Among their most notable finds were several extinct vertebrates, including the 25-million-year-old Pronconsul primate, one of the first and few fossil ape skulls discovered.

Political unrest in nearby Kenya forced them to put their work on hold, but they went back to Olduvai Gorge in the late 1950s. While they had focused on tools in their previous work at the gorge, they went back to look for further evidence of human life.

One day in 1959, Mary went out to work as usual, leaving Louis behind with a headache. She discovered fossilized parts of a skull and upper teeth of a type of hominin that had not been previously identified.

Over the next several weeks, the Leakeys uncovered about 400 pieces of a nearly complete skull. There were similarities to other discoveries, including those in South Africa by Raymond Dart in 1924 and by Robert Broom in 1936. However, the Leakeys classified their find as new category of hominin, dubbing it Zinjanthropus boisei.

It was not the direct ancestor of humankind that the Leakeys had hoped for, but it brought the couple some notoriety and spurred public interest in the study of human origins.

They dated the discovery as having lived 1.75 million years ago. This made it the oldest hominin discovered to that point, although a lack of fossil-dating technology made it difficult to determine the age of Dart's and Broom's earlier finds. The combination of the works of the Leakeys, Dart and Broom made a convincing case that humans originally evolved in Africa.

By 1960, Louis Leakey had become ill and Mary took over most of the operation. There were a number of developments during this period. They uncovered a well-preserved fossil foot that had arches, giving credence to the theory that hominins walked upright.

During this time, Mary Leakey and son Jonathan found another, smaller form of hominin that they called Homo habilis, translated as "handy human," because it seemed he was able to use tools. This fossil was dated at about 2 million years old. This was confirmed when another son, Richard, discovered another Homo habilis in 1972.

This 1972 discovery also supported the elder Leakey's theory that there were several lines of hominins developing simultaneously and that the Homo genus did not evolve from Australopithecus. [ Know Your Roots? Take Our Human Evolution Quiz]

Twiggy

In 1968, a 1.8-million-year-old skull discovered in 1968 by Peter Nzube, who was part of the Leakey team. Nicknamed Twiggy, after the slim British model, the skull was flattened and had to be reconstructed from hundreds of fragments. Since her third set of molars had erupted, Twiggy was believed to have been an adult at death. However, the molars did not show much wear, so it is likely she had much time to use them.

But the Leakeys were not responsible for what some scientists term the biggest and most significant findings at Olduvai Gorge. In 1986, a team of Tanzanian and American archeologists unearthed 302 bones and teeth belonging to a female that was determined to be about 1.8 million years old.

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Olduvai Gorge: Oldest Evidence of Mankind's Evolution

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(Image credit: PRILL | Shutterstock ) Olduvai Gorge is a site in Tanzania that holds the earliest evidence of the existence of human ancestors. Paleoanthropologists have found hundreds of fossilized bones and stone tools in the area dating back millions of years, leading them to conclude that humans evolved in Africa.

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The Top Seven Human Evolution Discoveries From Tanzania by Erin Wayman

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The Top Seven Human Evolution Discoveries From Tanzania by Erin Wayman

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https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-top-seven-human-evolution-discoveries-from-tanzania-133532949/

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Lucy and Ardi are the poster children of human evolution. But these famous fossil skeletons may never have been found if it weren't for Louis and Mary Leakey's pioneering efforts. The pair made several discoveries at Tanzania's Olduvai Gorge in the 1950s and 1960s that inspired other anthropologists to come to East Africa in search of human ancestors. Here's a look at some of the most important hominid fossil finds from Tanzania.

The Nutcracker Man (OH 5): The Leakeys' first major discovery at Olduvai Gorge occurred in 1959. Mary found the roughly 1.8-million-year-old skull of a hominid with a flat face, gigantic teeth, a large crest on the top of its head (where chewing muscles attached) and a relatively small brain. They named the species Zinjanthropus boisei (now known as Paranthropus boisei). Nicknamed the Nutcracker Man, the species was too different from modern people to be the direct human ancestor that Louis had been hoping to find. But the discovery captured public interest in human evolution, and the Leakeys went on to unearth many more hominid fossils at Olduvai. OH 5 is the fossil's official catalog name, meaning Olduvai Hominid Number 5.

Johnny's Child (OH 7): The next big Leaky discovery came in 1960. Mary and Louis' son, Johnny, found a lower jaw about 300 yards away from where the Nutcracker Man was discovered. The bone came from a young hominid; thus, the fossil was nicknamed Johnny's Child. At the same spot, the Leakeys also dug up some hand bones and skull fragments. Using these skull fragments, the Leakeys and their colleagues estimated the roughly 1.8-million-year-old hominid's brain size: 680 cubic centimeters. That was significantly bigger than the size of the average australopithecine brain, about 500 cubic centimeters. The hand bones revealed that the hominid had a " precision grip," when a fingertip presses against the tip of the thumb. This movement allows for fine manipulation of objects, such as turning a key in a door or threading a needle. The precision grip led the Leakeys to conclude that this hominid was the one who made the stone tools found at Olduvai. Because of the tool-making and the big brain, the Leakeys decided OH 7 represented the earliest member of the genus Homo: Homo habilis (meaning Handy Man).

OH 8: Also in 1960, the Leakeys' team discovered a well-preserved fossil foot belonging to H. habilis. The bones indicate the hominid had modern-looking foot arches, suggesting the species walked like modern people do. Tooth marks on the specimen's ankle reveal the hominid had been a crocodile's lunch.

OH 9: At the same time the Leakeys unearthed the first examples of H. habilis, they also recovered the skull cap of a more recent hominid dating to about 1.4 million years ago. At 1,000 cubic centimeters, the specimen's brain was much bigger than that of H. habilis. The skull had thick brow ridges and a low, sloped forehead-key features linking the fossil to the species Homo erectus.

Twiggy (OH 24): Discovered in 1968 by Peter Nzube, Twiggy is a skull belonging to an adult H. habilis dating to roughly 1.8 million years ago. Although OH 24 is the most complete H. habilis skull from Olduvai Gorge, it was found crushed completely flat (and therefore named after the slender British model of the same name). Paleoanthropologist Ron Clarke reconstructed what the skull would have looked like, but it's still fairly distorted.

LH 4: In the 1970s, after Louis died, Mary began excavations at Laetoli, about 30 miles from Olduvai Gorge. The fossils she was finding there were much older than the bones she and Louis had discovered at Olduvai. In 1974, for example, her team unearthed a lower jaw with teeth dating to 3.6 million years ago. It was cataloged as Laetoli Homind 4, or LH 4. Around the same time, anthropologists at the site of Hadar in Ethiopia were also finding hominid fossils dating to more than 3 million years ago, including the famous Lucy skeleton. At first, no one was sure what to call these older fossils. After analyzing both the Hadar and Laetoli specimens, anthropologists Tim White and Donald Johanson (Lucy's discoverer) concluded that all of the fossils represented one species that they called Australopithecus afarensis. They chose LH 4 as the species' type specimen, or the standard representative of the species. Mary did not approve. She didn't believe the fossils from Laetoli were australopithecines. But under the rules of taxonomy, once a type specimen is designated, it's forever associated with its species name. (For more on the controversy, see Johanson's book .)

Laetoli Footprints: In 1978, one of Mary's team members, Paul Abell, made the most famous discovery at Laetoli: He found the trail of about 70 fossilized hominid footprints. Based on the footprints' age, 3.6 million years, anthropologists think they were made by an A. afarensis group. The footprints reveal this early hominid had a very modern way of walking. The big toe was in line with the other toes, not off to the side like an ape's big toe. And the prints reveal the walkers had arches, unlike the flat feet of an ape. The footprints also suggest A. afarensis had a modern gait.

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The Top Seven Human Evolution Discoveries From Tanzania

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Lucy and Ardi are the poster children of human evolution. But these famous fossil skeletons may never have been found if it weren't for Louis and Mary Leakey's pioneering efforts. The pair made several discoveries at Tanzania's Olduvai Gorge in the 1950s and 1960s that inspired other anthropologists to come to East Africa in search of human ancestors.

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Several dinosaur fossils have been found in Eastern Tanzania on Tendaguru Hill

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Several dinosaur fossils have been both found and completed in museums across Tanzania, with 8 of them being the most common across the country. One of these dinosaurs is though to be the Brachiosaurus, a long necked herbivorous dinosaur that ate the leaves off of tall trees. A brachiosaurus fossil found in 1914 Tanzania is now proudly displayed at Naturkunde Museum in Berlin as the opening attraction.

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National history museum, Dinosaurs in Tanzania

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National history museum, Dinosaurs in Tanzania

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Country - Dinosaurs found in Tanzania | Natural History Museum

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The Citizen, Tanzania ‘natural treasure’ draws crowds far from home

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The Citizen, Tanzania ‘natural treasure’ draws crowds far from home

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https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzania/news/national/tanzania-natural-treasure-draws-crowds-far-from-home-2692252

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Berlin. After taking a few steps into the Naturkunde Museum in Berlin, the first artefact you will see is a skeleton of the uniquely tall dinosaur, the Brachiosaurus brancai (Giraffatitan).

Standing at 13.27 metres high, the Giraffatitan is the tallest mounted dinosaur skeleton in the world, as the Guinness (Book of) World Records affirms. Hence the 'moniker' Giraffatitan, meaning a titanic giraffe, genus of the sauropod dinosaur that lived during the late Jurassic Period: the Kimmeridgian-Tithonian stages.

The beast was originally named as an African species of Brachiosaurus (Brachiosaurus brancai), but this has since been changed.

"Visitors have nicknamed it 'Oskar,'" said the director general of the Prof Johannes Christian Vogel during an interview with a group of journalists from Tanzania and Kenya who visited the facility in early September.

In Germany, the name 'Oskar' refers to a 'God spear,' 'deer-lover' or 'champion warrior.'

Standing tall in the centre of the hall of the museum, dinosaur Oskar is the symbol of Naturkunde - and, regardless of the presence of other artefacts in the place - its uniqueness attracts visitors from all over the world.

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According to Prof Vogel - a German botanist and Professor of Biodiversity and Public Science at Humboldt who, since February 1, 2012, has been director general of the Naturkunde Museum - the museum holds a collection of about 30 million specimens for research. Some of them - including the Giraffatitan dinosaur - are exhibited for the public to admire and wonder at.

"The museum's exhibitions are seen by more than 700,000 visitors per year," said Prof Vogel.

One interesting fact about 'Oskar the Giraffatitan' is that it was one of the skeletons that were brought here from the expeditions that were made to Tendaguru Hills in what is today the Lindi Region in south-eastern Tanzania.

This was between 1909 and 1913 when the country was under German rule as Deutsch Ostafrika (Germany East Africa).

Scientists of the museum, led by palaeontologist Warner Janensch (1878-1969), found approximately 5,000 artefacts with a combined weight of around 250 tonnes, which they shipped to Germany.

Apart from Oskar the dinosaur, the German expeditionists also retrieved the remains of the Janenschia Robusta, which belonged to a family of the largest dinosaurs that ever lived; but it's still a smaller creature compared to the Giraffatitan.

Today, not that many Tanzanians out of the 55 million-strong population have knowledge of the existence of this relatively unique collection which has been on show at the German museum for over 80 years now.
Missing experience
Inside the museum, the special collection is displayed in a thoroughly secured environment to preserve the fossils, as well as enable visitors and scientists to view - and even study them.

Scientists are able to study the bones and develop new findings from time to time. If nothing else, this helps in developing education especially in the field of natural history, focusing on biodiversity, evolution and earth sciences.

In terms of tourism, the museum has installed interactive telescopes - called 'Jurascopes' - that show visitors animation of how the original skeletons in the exhibition turn into 'live animals.' This is really most exciting!

But, it is also painful to realise that there is a generation of Tanzanians who are not able to finance a trip to Germany and, as such, will never have the opportunity to personally experience the unique artefacts that originate in their motherland, and which are now the cynosure of world-class tourists in a foreign land.
Retention debate
A number of Members of the Union Parliament recently appealed to the Tanzania government to prevail upon Germany to return the fossils to their country of origin so that Tanzanians could benefit from them through tourism earnings.

There are reports that the two governments did dialogue on the return of the unique treasures. But we were later told that the Tanzania government 'argued that there were no proper logistics that would accommodate the preservation and display of these artefacts - let alone doing so for tourism purposes!

Taking into serious consideration the amount of money that the German federal government has been spending on scientific researches and preservation of these precious, rare collections, it can reasonable be argued that the Tanzanian government does indeed have a valid point.

On the issue of whom the dinosaur belongs to, the Naturkunde Museum chief said it can just as well be said that Girraffetitan belongs to everybody - if only because, according to history, humans and dinosaurs have never co-existed in mutual harmony.

Even during the time when the remains were taken to Germany, there were no country's boundaries-defined nation-states, only colonies.

"But, I really have no say on how this might be decided. As a director (of the Museum), my job is only to take care of these historic collections. It is really a political matter - and the German state will do that on my behalf," Prof Vogel waxed lyrical.

Very expensive to keep

"Costly..." This is one word that the director of the museum, Prof Vogel, can use to describe how much it has already cost the museum - which is basically under the German Federal State Government - in terms of the dinosaur collection's upkeep.

Starting from the initial point of research process, a lot of money must have gone into the whole undertaking.

"If you look at what it costs to produce a scientific paper in the West... Well, it is roughly equivalent to a million euros. Add to that the fact that one dinosaur's collection has had about 200 scientific papers written about it in the past 100 years," Prof Vogel elaborated.

This means that, in terms of the investments done in the science only, nearly €200 million have been used. When computed using the current exchange rate, it amounts to more than Sh507 billion!

The Naturkunde facility also comprises a variety of general and high-end laboratories, a large scientific library, more than 70 professional scientific staff and an upgraded ICT infrastructure installed with the goal of digitizing their work.

Being a research museum, Naturkunde (roughly German for 'Natural History,' or 'Nature Study') is devoted to basic research and education in all fields of natural history, focusing on biodiversity, evolution and earth sciences.

Holding such a large collection of artefacts - about 30 million, ye gods! - the Naturkunde Museum is like a huge charity institution, as there are more costs to managing it than profits, Prof Vogel said, somewhat philosophically.

"You cannot make any profit out of it; it instead costs you so much," he stressed - revealing that huge investments continue to be made in it in order to operate it successfully as a public museum. This is especially when you take into account the science aspect to it.
Ready to support
"There are a lot of exciting discoveries that are yet to be made in this piece of land on Planet Earth called 'Tanzania,' and we will be happy to do it with you (Tanzanians) - if you are really interested," Prof Vogel rhapsodised.

In that regard, he revealed that a team of scientists who made an expedition to Tanzania early this year discovered fragments of dinosaurs near the area where the first excavation took place in early last century.

"We are willing, able and ready to support and build capacity for any scientific research and related development that the country (Tanzania) would want to make," the good professor pledged - adding that his Museum has been conducting researches in Tanzania, doing so in partnership with such institutions as the University of Dar es Salaam.

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Tanzania 'natural treasure' draws crowds far from home

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Berlin. After taking a few steps into the Naturkunde Museum in Berlin, the first artefact you will see is a skeleton of the uniquely tall dinosaur, the Brachiosaurus brancai (Giraffatitan).

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Tanzania also features a diverse amount of both plant and animal fossils, as well as ancient artifacts of human civilizations.

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Stone tools said to have been used by early humans have been found and dated all the way back to 2 million years ago, including stones used for cutting, or crushing made of various stone materials.