The Allia Bay is a region on the east side of

Lake Turkana Lake Turkana () is a saline lake in the Kenyan Rift Valley, in northern Kenya, with its far northern end crossing into Ethiopia. It is the world's largest permanent desert lake and the world's largest alkaline lake. By volume it is the world ...

Kenya Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country located in East Africa. With an estimated population of more than 52.4 million as of mid-2024, Kenya is the 27th-most-populous country in the world and the 7th most populous in Africa. ...

. The site is known for yielding its first hominid fossils in 1982, with further findings to this day, all of which have been identified as part of ''

Australopithecus anamensis ''Australopithecus anamensis'' is a hominin species that lived roughly between 4.3 and 3.8 million years ago, and is the oldest known ''Australopithecus'' species, Nearly 100 fossil specimens of ''A. anamensis'' are known from Kenya and Ethiopia ...

'' but possibly related to ''

Australopithecus afarensis ''Australopithecus afarensis'' is an extinct species of australopithecine which lived from about 3.9–2.9 million years ago (mya) in the Pliocene of East Africa. The first fossils were discovered in the 1930s, but major fossil finds would not ta ...

''. Notable people with findings at Allia Bay include:

Richard Leakey Richard Erskine Frere Leakey (19 December 1944 – 2 January 2022) was a Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist and politician. Leakey held a number of official positions in Kenya, mostly in institutions of archaeology and wildlife cons ...

Meave Leakey Meave G. Leakey (born Meave Epps; 28 July 1942) is a British palaeoanthropologist. She works at Stony Brook University and is co-ordinator of Plio-Pleistocene research at the Turkana Basin Institute. She studies early hominid evolution and has ...

, Craig Feibel, Ian McDougall,

Alan Walker Alan Olav Walker (born 24 August 1997) is a Norwegian DJ and record producer. His songs "Faded (Alan Walker song), Faded", "Sing Me to Sleep", "Alone (Alan Walker song), Alone", "All Falls Down (Alan Walker song), All Falls Down" (with Noah Cy ...

Geography

The geographic coordinates of Allia Bay are 3°35′4″N, 36°16′4″E. As a set of isolate exposures it forms the southernmost region of

Koobi Fora Koobi Fora refers primarily to a region around Koobi Fora Ridge, located on the eastern shore of Lake Turkana in the territory of the nomadic Gabbra people. According to the National Museums of Kenya, the name comes from the Gabbra language ...

. One of its distinct features is the ''c.''4.2 Ma "

bone bed A bone bed is any Geology, geological stratum or deposition (geology), deposit that contains bones of whatever kind. Inevitably, such deposits are Sedimentary rock, sedimentary in nature. Not a formal term, it tends to be used more to describe esp ...

", which was likely a channel of the ancestral

Omo River The Omo River (; also called Omo-Bottego) in southern Ethiopia is the largest Ethiopian river outside the Nile Basin. Its course is entirely contained within the boundaries of Ethiopia, and it empties into Lake Turkana on the border with Kenya. T ...

Findings

All of the specimens were found to be 3.9 to 4.4 million years old and were dated using 3 main methods: argon-argon dating, potassium-argon dating, and

magnetostratigraphy Magnetostratigraphy is a geophysical correlation technique used to date sedimentary and volcanic sequences. The method works by collecting oriented samples at measured intervals throughout the section. The samples are analyzed to determine their ' ...

. Leakey, Feibel,

McDougall McDougall or McDougal (see also MacDougall) is a Scottish surname that can refer to several people, places and things. It is derived from the Gaelic ''Mac Dubhghaill'', meaning "son of Dubhghall." It shares the same origin as McDowell. People name ...

, and

Walker Walker or The Walker may refer to: People *Walker (given name) *Walker (surname) *Walker (Brazilian footballer) (born 1982), Brazilian footballer Places In the United States *Walker, Arizona, in Yavapai County *Walker, Mono County, California * ...

were involved in the discovery of 12 new specimens, presumed to be a new species within the genus ''

Australopithecus ''Australopithecus'' (, ; or (, ) is a genus of early hominins that existed in Africa during the Pliocene and Early Pleistocene. The genera ''Homo'' (which includes modern humans), ''Paranthropus'', and ''Kenyanthropus'' evolved from some ''Aus ...

''. The new species was thought to be a possible ancestor of ''

'' and a sister species of ''

Ardipithecus ramidus ''Ardipithecus ramidus'' is a species of australopithecine from the Afar region of Early Pliocene Ethiopia 4.4 million years ago (mya). The species ''A. ramidus'' is the type species for the genus ''Ardipithecus''. There is an older species in t ...

''. The 12 specimens found at Allia Bay were in conjunction with an additional nine that were found at

Kanapoi Kanapoi is a paleontological site in the Kenyan Rift Valley, to the southwest of Lake Turkana. Fossils were first found at Kanapoi in the 1960s by a Harvard expedition, and later by expeditions from the National Museums of Kenya. Fossils at Kanapo ...

; these two sites' findings are the basis of a new, singular species within ''

,'' for which the first Kanapoi specimen is the

holotype A holotype (Latin: ''holotypus'') is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of s ...

, and the later Kanapoi and Allia Bay findings are

paratype In zoology and botany, a paratype is a specimen of an organism that helps define what the scientific name of a species and other taxon actually represents, but it is not the holotype (and in botany is also neither an isotype (biology), isotype ...

s. The Allia Bay specimens, listed in the table below, were found in or under the Moiti Tuff and have a mean age of 3.89 million years The method by which these specimens were named is concurrent with those found at

: KNM-ER stands for Kenya National Museum - East Rudolf, where Rudolf is the lesser known, alternative name for

References

{{reflist Lake Turkana Paleontology in Kenya Pleistocene paleontological sites of Africa