The Turkana Basin fills and empties
A rift basin in Kenya cycles between deep lake and dry plain, burying the record as it goes.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 1.8 million years
- Known to
- ± 100 thousand years
- Era
- Early Pleistocene, Quaternary
The Turkana Basin holds a nearly continuous sequence of lake and river sediments interleaved with datable volcanic ash, spanning the whole of hominin evolution. Its lake expands and contracts with regional climate, and each cycle buries bones and stone tools in fine sediment. More early hominin fossils have come from this one basin than from anywhere else on Earth, including Turkana Boy, the Black Skull, and the oldest known stone tools.