Skeletal remains of a group of foragers massacred around 10,000 years ago, on the shores of a lagoon in what is now southwestern Turkana, is unique evidence of a violent encounter between clashing groups of ancient hunter-gatherers, and suggests the “presence of warfare” in late Stone Age foraging societies. The fossilised bones of a group [...]
Journalist and presenter Zeinab Badawi (BBC) will be conversing with Richard Leakey as he reflects on his life's work at the Royal Society in London next Wednesday, October 21 at 6:30 PM London time (1:30 PM EST). Leakey's career over the past fifty years has spanned paleoanthropology, wildlife conservation and campaigning for political justice. This [...]
The Turkana Basin Institute, in collaboration with the University of Bradford, has set up a web site fossilfinder.org, recruiting an army of ‘citizen scientists’ to help discover fossils and other ancient artefacts using the unique online platform “Zooniverse”. fOssilfinder.org is a pioneering project, funded in part by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, enabling amateur [...]
The West Turkana Archaeological Project team has found the earliest known stone artifacts, dating to 3.3 million years ago. The discovery pushes back the beginning of the archaeological record by 700,000 years, or by over a quarter of humanity's previously-known material cultural history.
Discovered near the village of Ileret (shown on map) in northern Kenya, 3 new hominin individuals were announced on March 27. New hominin fossils from the Turkana Basin were announced on March 27 at the 2015 annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in St. Louis, MO. These fossils, representing 3 individuals of the genus [...]
Richard Leakey made headlines around the world in 1989 when a stockpile of 12 tons of ivory was burned in Nairobi National Park. This media event was orchestrated by Leakey, then Director of the Kenya Wildlife Service, to raise awareness of the massive poaching problem from which Kenya was suffering at the time, and [...]
On 26-27 September 2014 at Toulouse, France, in the symposium The African Human Fossil Record. This public event, open to researchers and students in paleoanthropology and prehistory as well as to the nonprofessional audience, will present thirteen talks provided by eminent specialists discussing the ancestry, life-history, diet, behavior, and other aspects of early Homo. The panel [...]