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Kenya: Land That Takes Historians to Dawn of Time
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The Nation (Nairobi)
20 October 2007
Posted to the web 22 October 2007
Joseph Kipkoech
Nairobi
The Lukeino basin of Kabarnet in Baringo district has over the years been attracting scholars, especially historians. The basin in Kipsaraman division has been yielding exciting evidence concerning the prehistoric human being.
One could rightly say that the 1,500-sq-km basin is a book on human evolution.
Many remains of the Orrorin Tugenensis - a primate widely considered to be an ancestor of today's human being - have been found in the area.
Orrorin has been collected at four sites at Kapsomin, the richest site in the southern part of the basin, which has a cliff of basalt near a lake's edge.
Many of the Orrorin's fossils were found at the foot of the cliff, and damage to the bones indicate that it was probably the prey of a large carnivore, most likely a leopard, remains of which were also found at the site.
Nearby, according to the Kipsaraman community museum curator, Ms Charity Gatumu, there were hot springs, and some of the Orrorin bones were covered in a thin film of travertine deposited by the hot waters that erupted from them.
The greater Lukeino formation covers fossil sites such as Kapsonlin, Cheberen, Chepkesin, Kapturo, Yatya, Karuwen, Kositei, Tabarin, Rondinin and Musionin gullies.
The Lukeino formation (6.5 million to 7 million years old) stretches from Aragai, near Sibilo in the south, to Ribon in the north.
Most of the deposits are lake beds, but in the south near Rondinin, there are river deposits rich in fossils.
Orrorin Tugenensis, points out Ms Gatumu, was collected at Kapsomin and other sites in the area.
Bones as well as the skull of a gazelle with its horn covers, the teeth of impalas, monkeys and other mammals were found there too.
The presence of impalas at Kapsomin reveals that the environment was probably woodland, quite different from the semi-arid and bushland that Kapsomin is today.
The lake beds at the Lukeino formation are rich in fossil fish and leaves, which show that the region was wooded and even forested six million years ago.
Cheboit is a richly fossiliferous basal part of the Lukeino formation that yielded the first evidence of Miocene hominids in 1974, the same year that the australopitilecine Lucy was found. The fossil was a lower third molar.
The fine fossil skull from Cheboit, belongs to a giant pig known as Nyanzachoenis.
The first specimens of this extinct pig were found at Kanam on the shores of Lake Victoria, hence its name.
It has since been found in many parts of Africa, including Tunisia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Malawi and South Africa.
At the Kapcheberek site within the Lukeino formation, the curator explains, it yielded the hand phalanx of Orrorin Tugenensis, which suggests that Orrorin could still climb trees.
The bones found at Cheboit were from Chemositia Tugenensis. The name "Chemositia" is derived from the Kalenjin legend of a wild beast locally known as chemosit, which gave rise to the myth of the Nandi bear. Scientifically, it is a Chalicathere (stone beast), a strange relative of the rhino and the horse, but much bigger than a horse.
The full skull and the lower jaw of a crocodile were excavated at Ngembo Kaplelach, near Yatya.
The region that covers the Lukeino formation contains volcanic rock and sediments deposited during the last 17 million years of the earth's history.
Past conditions
Kabarnet National Museum of Kenya curator Daniel Kipkorir says these findings shed light on past conditions in the region, including climate and how it changed, its fauna and flora, volcanic activity and many other aspects of interest to scientists and lay people.
Mr Kipkorir adds that the earliest evidence of the bipedal hominid is from Rondinin, in the Lukeino formation. Here the six million old fossils of millennium man Orrorin Tugenensis were discovered in October 2000.
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The discovery of Orrorin Tugenensis at the Rondinin heritage site, now referred to as Orrorin's land, added more than 1.5 million years to the history of tile family of hominidae (humans).
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