Turkana Basin

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.