Island Africa Project

Though the presence of dinosaur-bearing sediments in the mountains northwest of Lake Turkana has been known for more than 40 years, these deposits and the fossils they contained remained poorly understood.  Paleontological reconnaissance of these deposits, initiated in 2004 by the University of Utah, and resumed in 2008 as part of a joint National Museums of Kenya/Stony Brook University initiative, has begun to shed light on Kenya’s enigmatic dinosaur record.  The coarse sandstone deposits of the Lapurr Range contain a relatively diverse vertebrate fauna including dinosaurs, crocodiles, and other small animals that provide a glimpse into the history of Turkana more than 70 million years before the arrival of our own hominid ancestors. 

The Turkana fossils offer suggestive evidence of a Late Cretaceous age, possibly making the Lapurr fauna one of the best known from this poorly known period in Africa. Research in now underway on the significant new collection from the 2008 field season, which includes important cranial and postcranial remains of theropod dinosaurs, a partial skeleton of a titanosaurian sauropod, and cranial remains of dyrosaurs and basal mesoeucrocodylians. This research has been funded by the National Geographic Society and the Turkana Basin Institute.