Our Lake Turkana ANCESTORS
"Today Lake Turkana lies in the midst of a dry, hostile desert environment. But this was not always the case. About two million years ago, the lake was much larger and the surrounding area was greener, Since then, rapid changes to the climate have periodically caused the lake to shrink, and occasionally it has disappeared altogether. During the wetter times, it was an ideal place for early humans to live, and when they died it was a perfect place for their remains to fossilise. That is because Lake Turkana lies in a volcanic area, where tectonic activity can move earth's crust and create new layers. It is within these layers that fossils from different time periods are found." TURKANA BASIN ― CLIMATIC TIMELINE (mya = million years ago, kya = thousand years ago) c. 4.5 mya One of the earliest paleoenvironments of the Turkana basin was the Apak floodplain of the Pliocene epoch. Around 4.5 million years ago the ancestral Omo, Turkwell, and Keiro rivers were joined...