The
Turkana Basin in northern
Kenya and southern
Ethiopia (immediately adjacent to their convergence with the South Sudan and Uganda) is a site of geological
subsidence containing one of the most continuous and temporally well controlled fossil records of the
Plio-Pleistocene with some fossils as old as the
Cretaceous. Among the Basin's critical fossiliferous sites are
Lothagam, Allia Bay, and
Koobi Fora. Much of the Turkana Basin today can be described as arid scrubland or even desert, but the center of the Basin holds
Lake Turkana (at 3.3 degrees north latitude and 36.05 degrees east longitude), a major
East African Rift and alkaline lake that supports a wide array of wildlife and a community of
Turkana,
Daasanach,
Nyangatom and
Pokot peoples.