A Bit of Butterflys and a Bit of Skulls

Day 12
7:30 Breakfast
9:00 Butterfly Farm
12:00-5:30 Nairobi Museum
6:45 Dinner

Holding the Chameleon

   "It's going to be a busy day!" At the butterfly farm we first went to the pupa nursery. Since the butterflies hatch in the morning they always have staff in there watching. Afterwards we went to the private collection area, which isn't open to the public, it was a very nice gesture of the staff to let us back there. "There are 1 million pinned butterflies in the collection and 3540 of the 3600 African butterfly species. They almost have a specimen of them all to study!" The greenhouse with the butterflies was neat, there was a bright green chameleon too!
   The archaeology class went back to the museum in Nairobi again to meet with Mzalendo. We went behind the scenes to the labs in the museum. Mzalendo had laid out stone tools and gave us a lecture on all the ages in evolutionary history. A paleontology professor did a guest lecture on the controversy of modern human evolution using skulls from the museum to illustrate her point. We had a tour of the vertebra prep. lab to see how they preserved all the ancient bones.  10 years ago today I was learning about evolution, in Kenya, at the museum, which was so much cooler than being in a lecture hall in Canada!

Kenya Butterfly Farm

Butterfly







Amy's Been To The Butterfly Centre!

 

Archaeology Class with Mzalendo

Behind the Scenes at Nairobi Museum



Modern Human Evolution