[This is post #16 of what will be multiple posts about our 2024 trip to Africa. To go to the first post in the series CLICK HERE.]
We had had a wonderful time watching the lion pride at the marsh (previous post) and especially the adorable little cubs.
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| Some of the lion cubs at the marsh |
However, we really needed to get moving since we had a very long trip ahead. Our ultimate goal was Lion's Paw Camp on the far rim of Ngorongoro Crater. However, we also planned to stop at Olduvai Gorge.
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| GPS
track for Sept. 17 in khaki--from Serengeti Sametu Camp in the
northwest (first part of khaki track hidden under cyan track for Sept.
16) to Lions Paw Camp to the southeast (on the northeast edge of
Ngorongoro Crater). Red line is gps track of our flight to north Serengeti on Day 3, Sept 12. |
Python. As we were turning around in the marsh to make our way out to the main road, Fazal spotted a very large snake that he immediately recognized as a python. Looking just at its head buried in the grass it doesn't appear that impressive,.
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| Head of an African Rock Python in the grass |
However it was huge.
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| Southern African Rock Python on a termite mound |
This is an African Rock Python,the largest snake in Africa and the third largest snake in the world. iNaturallist thinks this is a Southern African Rock Python. Although smaller than the Central African Rock Python that is also found in this area, Southern African Rock Pythons average 9 to 13 feet long and weigh up to 70 pounds. Although unusual, there are reports of Rock Pythons as long as 20 feet and weighing 200 pounds!
Whatever kind of snake this was, it was enormous both in length and diameter. As seen in the picture above, it was on a termite mound. I am not sure how long it was, but the termite mound was probably 4 feet high. That means I can account for at least 8 feet of snake in the picture (4 vertical feet, 3 horizontal feet along the top, and 1 foot for the neck and head buried in the grass bottom right). Since the tail is normally smaller in diameter than the main body, there was probably more snake draped over the back.
I am glad we were in the vehicle and not on foot. According to this source, they are very aggressive and can tackle an antelope weighing up to 130 pounds.
Hyenas. Further down the road we encountered three hyenas. They had apparently just come from a kill, since at least one of them had blood on her chin and her side.
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| Two spotted hyenas passing by. Note the vulture on top of the bush. |
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| A Lappet-faced Vulture keeps watch |
I don't know where they were going, but the hyenas seemed to be on a mission. They walked around us and just kept going.
Cheetahs. It was not quite 9:30 am, but we discovered three cheetahs that had claimed one of the very few shady spots in the region.
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| Three cheetahs lounging under this lone small tree |
This group, known as a coalition, is almost certainly three males, possibly brothers. Females remain solitary for life unless they are raising cubs or there is a temporary mother-daughter allegiance. Given the blood on their faces, they had probably recently come from a nearby kill.
Naabi Hill Gate. Despite the various stops along the way, we were making good time. We reached Naabi Hill Gate at about 10:15.
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| View of the picnic area and restroom building from the parking lot of Naabi Hill Gate |
Naabi Hill is a large kopje rising out of the flat, treeless plains that spread out in all directions.
Naabi
Hill Gate is the main entrance to Serengeti National Park for visitors
entering form or exiting to the east. There are administrative offices,
restrooms, a refreshment stand, and lots of picnic tables. Naabi
Hill is still over 10 miles from the actual boundary between Serengeti
NP and Ngorongoro Conservaton Area, the region to the east. Apparently
the plains during the rainy season are too wet for permanent structures
so they located everything here partway up the hill.
We
stopped to take care of the paperwork for exit from Serengeti and to
get our entry permits to Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Ngorongoro
Conservation Area includes Olduvai Gorge and the Ngorongoro Crater.
Tanzania seems to be big on paperwork. Fortunately Fazal took care of
all the details while we either hung out at the vehicle or made a pit
stop at the restroom.
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| More of the picnic area and concession building. The hill rises behind and to the right |
The other major attraction here is the 360 degree panoramic view of the surrounding plains from the top of the hill. The top is accessible via a short hiking trail. We decided not to do the trek up the hill since there wasn't much to see. However, during the rainy season, the animals of the Great Migration are here. At that time the plains are filled with 2 million wildebeest, zebra, and Thomson's gazelle.
The picture below is looking north from the parking lot. We were only part way up Naabi Hill or about 170 feet above the plain according to my gps. Dust trails from vehicles on the roads are visible.
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| View across the surrounding plain from the parking lot of Naabi Hill |
I don't know whether it was the paperwork or standing in line, but it took more than half an hour for Fazal to handle the formalities. However it was a welcome stop after a long morning of rough roads. Before we set out again, Fazal put down the top on the vehicle and we stowed our cameras in our camera bags. We would be traveling at somewhat faster speeds on the "highway", but it was unpaved and extraordinarily dusty. At the very least we wanted to protect the cameras from the dust. I don't know the makeup of the dirt on the roads, but it reminded me of caliche in west Texas.
Ngorongoro Conservation Area. It was about 11:30 when we officially left Serengeti National Park and entered the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA).
National Heritage Site. NCA, like Serengeti National Park, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Interestingly it has been so since 1979, while Serengeti NP was not designated as such until 1981. It was initially listed for its natural significance. Ngorongoro Crater is the world's largest unbroken and unflooded volcanic caldera and is part of the East African Rift. The National heritage Site was expanded in 2010 to include Olduvai Gorge and Laetoli for their cultural significance.
Although the NCA is a protected area administered by the government to protect the animals, it is different from a national park in that people can live within the conservation area. We began to see people, homes, and domestic cattle.
Olduvai Gorge. It was just past noon when we pulled into the parking lot at Olduvai Gorge. It took a few minutes for Fazal to get our tickets, but fortunately there were very very few tourists while we were there.
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| Fazal went in to take care of getting our tickets. The green plants in the foreground are sisal. The gorge is named after the Masaai word for the wild sisal plant, Oldupaai. |
Olduvai Gorge is one of the most important paleo-anthropological sites in the world. The area has yielded numerous fossil remains from about five million to 10,000 years ago, including the skull of the primitive hominid australopithecus boisei ("nutcracker man") and homo habilis ("the human who used tools”).
Although first discovered by German researchers in the 1910's, it was Louis and Mary Leakey who worked at this site for decades. Their work revolutionized the understanding of the evolutionary development of humans. Before the discoveries at Olduvai, the human race was thought to be only about 600,000 years old. The Olduvai Gorge showed that the human lineage goes back at least a million years.
More importantly, much of the work here showed the connection between the development of stone technologies (i.e. increasingly more sophisticated stone tools) and the evolution from Homo habilis, "handy man", to Homo ergaster, "working man", to Homo erectus, "upright man", the immediate precursor to Homo sapiens. [For more info, see this very readable discussion: https://altezzatravel.com/articles/olduvai-gorge It explains how these species, unlike their contemporaries, developed from herbivores to omnivores and hence survived being forced to leave the forests for the savannah.]
At the time I did not understand the research or where it was being done, but I certainly remember hearing stories on the nightly news when I was in school about the Leakeys and their discoveries. It was a very big deal.
Overlook. Our first stop was an overlook on the rim of the gorge. Olduvai Gorge is a steep-sided 300 foot deep, 30 mile long ravine in the Great Rift Valley. It was here that one of the guides gave us a wonderful introduction to the site.
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| Overlook with stadium seating. We stayed at the top since it was so steep |
One of the things she explained is the name "Olduvai" is similar to the Maasai word for sisal, Oldupaai, which grows wild in the area. A German scientist who found fossils and tools while in the area in 1910 reported his discoveries when he returned to Germany. However, he misunderstood the Maasai word for the area and called it Oldway. This somehow morphed into Olduvai and stuck.
Not only have there been many fossils and artifacts found here, but they have generally been found in well-defined geological layers formed from eruption of the nearby volcanoes or sedimentation from flooding.
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| Very visible layers |
Since the age of the layers is known it allows for accurate dating of the fossils and artifacts found within them. Seven major layers or beds have been identified, with the oldest going back 2.1 million years. [http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Olduvai_Gorge]
New Museum. The museum was founded by Mary Leakey in the 1970's. A new museum building was built and opened to the public in 2018.
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| Entrance to the museum [By Kufundisha - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=86178187] |
There are five exhibit halls featuring different aspects of the work at Olduvai Gorge. The exhibit halls form a ring around a central open area, mimicking the layout of a Maasai boma.
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| [https://www.ncaa.go.tz/olduvai-gorge-museum/] |
Laetoli Footprints. One of the exhibit halls is devoted to the fossilized footprints discovered by Mary Leakey in 1976 at Laetoli, which is about 28 miles south of Olduvau Gorge. At 3.7 million years old, the footprints were the oldest known evidence for bipedalism of hominins at the time. Analysis of the footprints and skeleetal structures provide clear evidence that bipedalism preceded large brains. Hominins were bipedal close to a million years before the earliest known stone tools were made. This was counter to the original assumption that the first traits to evolve after speciation were related to intelligence: big brains, tool use, and complex language
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| Impression of Laetoli footprints |
The display at the museum shown above is only a small portion of the footprints found. The original trail of footprints was 75 feet long. The prints were produced by three individuals, one walking in the footprints of the other, making those footprints difficult to interpret. More recently additional footprints of the same age but of different individuals have been recovered at the Laetoli site.
Lucy. Another display of interest to us was the assembly of several hundred fossilized bones, which was 40% of the skeleton of a female hominin from 3.2 million years. She was discovered in Ethiopia, not Tanzania, in 1974. She was named Lucy after the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, which the expedition members played repeatedly at the celebration the night she was found.
Multiple indicators of the skeleton and teeth suggest she was a mature but young adult.
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| The Frog with Lucy. Hominins have certainly gotten bigger in the last 3.2 million years. |
According to Wikipedia:
Lucy was 1.1 m (3 ft 7 in) tall, weighed 29 kg (64 lb), and (after reconstruction) looked somewhat like a chimpanzee. The creature had a small brain like a chimpanzee, but the pelvis and leg bones were almost identical in function to those of modern humans, showing with certainty that Lucy's species were hominins that had stood upright and had walked erect.
The walking gait with an upright structure, coupled with the small brain, was further evidence that bipedalism came before an enlarged brain in human evolution.
Lunch. By this time it was nearly 1:30 and we were starving. We retrieved the box lunches we had brought with us from the camp and had a very enjoyable lunch at the museum's picnic area.
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| Fazal, Frog,and Turkey finishing lunch |
We even had multiple birds show up around the table looking for a hand out that kept us entertained . They were small and acted like sparrows, but were much more colorful.
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| Speckle-fronted Weaver |
We were soon back on the road. We still had a long way to go before reaching Lion's Paw Camp, but we did stop long enough to grab a shot of the new Olduvai Museum Memorial on the highway at the turnoff to the museum.
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| Memorial on highway at turnoff to museum showing "nutcracker man" and "handy man”. Both were found at Olduvai Gorge, but I am not sure which one is which. |
Next up...Ngorongoro Crater known as Africa's "Eighth Wonder of the World", the world's largest intact volcanic caldera, and "Africa's Eden", home to over 25,000 animals including nearly all of Tanzania's animal species..
