When we have free time we spend it watching the bush babies come out every evening, reading, talking while sitting round the campfire, looking at the stars and constellations. Sometimes, while it's still early enough, we might take a shower using water from a plastic bag that has been heated by the sun (a solar shower).

Yes, the fossils do belong to the people of Tanzania! We have permission from the Tanzanian government to collect the fossils and to study them. We will obtain permission to borrow the specimens so that we can take them back to the United States temporarily until our studies are finished.

After that, the fossils will go back to Tanzania where they will stay permanently. We collected a nice fossil fish that will be used for teaching at the local school in the village of Mwaru.

Mwaru is far away from any major cities in Tanzania. The villagers will probably earn some money as always from selling farm products and charcoal locally.

Fossils are found in rocks formed at the Earth's surface called sedimentary rocks. Most plant fossils are found in rocks formed by deposition of very fine sediment in a body of water such as a lake or a river.

Here at Mahenge, all the fossils have been preserved between layers of mud (turned to stone) that were deposited in a lake. Sometimes, fossils are preserved in volcanic ash that has turned to stone (if the ash wasn't too hot to begin with!)

But, having the right kind of rock is not a guarantee that it will contain fossils - it always requires a search!

The fly whisk is made from the tail hairs of a cow. It is an important symbol of authority.

(The Puhinui students could think of other symbols of authority in our society - like the crown is the symbol of authority for the queen, and the mayoral chain is a symbol for our mayor.)

For this excavation, we used shovels, large pick-axes, small pick-axes, and metal buckets for hauling rocks out of the pit. We split the rocks open with hammers and chisels to look for fossils between the layers.

We also used orange plastic flagging to mark the sedimentary layers in the pit, and a brush to clean off the surface of the rocks so that we could follow the layers from one part of the pit to another that contained the greatest concentration of fossils.

Sorry, we can't take a photo of the tools any more now that we're in Dar es Salaam, because we donated all our tools to the villagers of Mwaru.

When we finish studying the fossils in America, they will go back to Tanzania for permanent storage at the National Museums of Tanzania. Unfortunately, we do not have the authority to loan speciments to your class - sorry.