The summer of 2025 saw ASPR Junior Fellow Margot Louail in the field doing paleontological work in the Usno Formation, Lower Omo Valley, Ethiopia, which is dated from about 3.5 to 2.8 million years ago. Together with the Shungura Formation, they provide the most continuous record of the Plio-Pleistocene sedimentation in the Turkana Depression. They have yielded thousands of fossil specimens.
Part of the 2025 Omo Group Research Expedition fieldwork team is actively looking for fossil specimens at the Usno Formation.
Margot consolidates a fractured specimen to prevent further deterioration during extraction from the sediments.
Following fieldwork, Margot will be working in the Omo collections at the Ethiopian Heritage Authority in Addis Ababa to continue taxonomic observations of the suid specimens and complete data acquisition.
Margot will then continue data acquisition in Poitiers, France, using a confocal microscope to conduct dental microwear analysis of suid specimens from the Omo Valley (Ethiopia), the Koobi Fora Formation (Kenya) and the Konso Formation (Ethiopia).
At last, Margot will be participating in the annual meeting of the European Society for the study of Human Evolution (ESHE) where she will present the latest findings of her research project on the paleoecology and paleobiogeography of suids from the Turkana Depression.
Some members of the Uno Lab (from left to right: Jon Smolen, Margot Louail, Kevin Uno) at the meeting of the European Society for the study of Human Evolution in September 2025 in Paris (France).
