Programme des sessions > Recherche par auteur > Foley Robert A

While the Turkana Basin is renowned for its Miocene and Pliocene fossil record, later Quaternary studies have almost entirely focused on its early Holocene deposits, with Middle and Upper Pleistocene records rare and poorly explored. Since 2007 through the In-Africa and Ng'ipalagem projects, we have been investigating the later Pleistocene and Holocene sediments of the Lower Kerio Valley in search of palaeoanthropological and palaeontological evidence for later hominin evolution. Our findings show that the record for the last million years in this part of the basin is rich, although geologically and chronostratigraphically complex. In this paper, we present results of surveys and excavations of a series of Middle and Upper Pleistocene localities about 20 kilometres south of Lothagam carried out between 2015-2022 - Lokodongot (LD2, LD3, LD4 and LD6), Ngingolea Aidome (NG1, NG1b), and Kalokoel (KL3, KL10). These are all rich in fossils, including a few fragmentary hominins, and lithic assemblages, mostly MSA. A broad outline of the proposed stratigraphy and chronology will be shown, along with a summary of the vertebrate record and lithic collections. We discuss the implications of these new localities and assemblages for later Quaternary palaeoecology and evolution in the basin and eastern Africa more generally.

Acknowledgements: this work was funded by ERC Advanced Grants In-Africa (#295907) and Ng'ipalagem (101020478), and with permission of the Government of Kenya (NACOSTI) and the support of the National Museums of Kenya.