Hunting Bones--Busman’s Holiday for Paleontologist

A boy about 12 years old disappeared one day along the banks of what is now Lake Turkana in northern Kenya and was found years later in remarkably good condition considering his age--1.6 million years.

Unearthing the near-complete Homo erectus skeleton in 1984 was heady stuff for a small band of paleontologists, among them John M. Harris of Hacienda Heights.

Harris, 43, heads the division of earth sciences of the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. For more than 15 years he has been a paleontologist on an exploration team led by Richard E. Leakey, son of the late Louis S. B. Leakey and his widow, Mary, who were famous for their fossil discoveries in Africa.

Harris is about to return to Africa for his annual trek into antiquity.

In his museum office, Harris recalled the excitement and painstaking work inspired by just one matchbook-sized fossilized bone.

Significant Discovery

The tiny bone fragment led to more exploration, which unearthed what paleontologists call the most significant fossil discovery of an early human ancestor in this decade.

The skeleton is known as KNM-WT 15000, indicating Kenya National Museum-West Turkana and its catalogue number.

The find was exciting, but Harris wasn’t there. He was exploring a different side of Lake Turkana when it was found. During his exploration, he found a cache of fossilized dinosaur bones in a gravel bed. Those bones date back about 120 million years, to the Mesozoic era.

“My skills are wandering around and looking,” Harris said.

Returning to Kenya

Harris will return to Kenya this summer, as he has on each of his summer vacations since taking the museum position in 1980. He will divide his time between the Kenya National Museum, where he will work at identifying fossils, and the area that yielded the dinosaur bones. He hopes to find evidence of “very scarce little furry creatures” that were ancestors of today’s mammals.

Harris, a native of London, earned a master’s degree in 1967 at the University of Texas, where he could work with fossils and be a teaching assistant at the same time. He later returned to England and received a doctorate in paleontology at the University of Bristol. In 1970, he moved to Africa and became director of paleontology at the National Museum in Nairobi, Kenya.

He was named to his current position after he and his wife, Judy, “decided it was time to have a more permanent base” for their children, Jackie, 10, and Julian, 8.

Full Days in Field

The discovery of the Homo erectus skeleton began with Kimoya Kimeu, a Kenyan on the Leakey team who found the first tiny bone fragment in surface soil in the dry bed of the Nariokotome River on the western side of Lake Turkana.

Harris said the bone was distinctly part of a human skull and was in a layer of soil that was known to be 1.6 million years old. Further exploration produced most of the skeleton. The men could tell from the pelvis that the skeleton was male. Its age was determined from its almost-intact jaws, which contain unerupted canine and wisdom teeth.

Harris speculates that the boy probably fell in marshlands, sinking into a layer of mud that preserved the skeleton from the usual ravages of animals and weather that affect bones.

Found on Goat Track

The bone fragments were found on a goat track, Harris said, “where generations of goats could have ruined them. We were surprised that anything could be there.

“We’re looking for all life, but I admit feeling excitement that this was human.

“This guy is the key to discovering more about (Homo erectus). His people were the first to have sophisticated stone tools. They were the first to harness fire, the first to migrate out of Africa.”

Even without much study, the bones have supplied new information on man’s ancestors. The skull is flatter and slightly smaller than those of modern humans, indicating a somewhat smaller brain. At an estimated height of 5 feet, 4 inches, the boy would probably have grown to at least six feet.