Research Projects

This site, located in western Turkana County north of the Turkwel River, was discovered and mapped in 2018, and documents an important but poorly known time period for Old World primate evolution from 25-28 myr.

Project leaders: Patricia Princehouse, Isaiah Nengo
Team members: Emmanuel Aoron

This project deploys neural network-based learning techniques to assist in the identification of fossil herbivore teeth found in the Turkana Basin.

Project leader: Daniel Green

The Buluk Research Project investigates faunal remains at the rich Miocene site of Buluk to document the origins of modern African mammal clades, including Old World monkeys and apes.

Project leaders: Ellen Miller, Isaiah Nengo
Team members: Ellis Locke

This project explores the effects of human communities on hyena populations.

Project leader: Miquel Torrents-Ticó

Using continuous GPS stations installed at TBI-Ileret and TBI-Turkwel to record frequent, precise measurements of movements in the Earth’s crust, this project focuses on the history of the formation of the East African Rift.

Project leader: Rebecca Bendick

Initiated in 2016, this project assesses the social and ecological status of Sibiloi National Park and surroundings, while exploring links between ecological and cultural change.

Project leader: Mar Cabeza
Team members: Visa Koiso-Kanttila, Iiris Härmä, Daniel Burgas, Sara Fraixedas

This project seeks to understand the life ways of early African pastoralists through examination of archaeological and bioarchaeological evidence.

Project leader: Elisabeth Sawchuk
Team members: Emmanuel Ndiema, Anneke Janzen, Dan Contreras, Katherine Grillo, Elisabeth Hildebrand

This project serves to further refine understanding of the complex geology in the Turkana Basin, enabling a more accurate dating of fossils and artifacts recovered there.

Project leader: Craig Feibel

This project utilizes the measurements of isotopes detected in faunal remains to reconstruct diets of large African mammals from the Miocene to present, to better understand the paleoecology of the terrestrial ecosystems in which these creatures lived.

Project leader: Thure Cerling

This project focuses on new fossil footprint and skeletal fossil data, with a goal of better understanding the ecological contexts of hominins living in the Turkana Basin around 1.5 million years ago.

Project leader: Neil Roach
Team members: Anna K. Berhensmeyer, Kevin Hatala, Frederick Manthi

In Africa, which just completed its eleventh field season, is a research program investigating the origins of our species—Homo sapiens—and its diversity in Africa, and aims at making new discoveries of early human fossils and archaeological sites to test models of human origins and diversification on the continent.

Project leader: Marta Lahr
Team members: Robert Foley, Abigail Parker, Hema Achyuthan, Katrien Janin, Celine Vidal, Aurélien Mounier, Jason Head

Since 1968, members of the KFRP have unearthed many of the top significant hominin discoveries known to science, such as skull KNM-ER 1470, the Turkana Boy skeleton, Australopithecus anamnesis, and Kenyanthropus platyops.

Project leaders: Meave Leakey, Louise Leakey

The LPWT examines the beginnings of agriculture and herding in Africa. Ethnobotanical, archaeological, and archaeobotanical data are utilized to explore the economies, culture, and survival strategies of the earliest hunter-gatherers on the continent.

Project leader: Elisabeth Hildebrand
Team members: Elisabeth Sawchuk, Kate Grillo

The LICCI investigates the potential of local knowledge systems to assist in generating climate research data.

Project leader: Victoria Reyes-García

Continued exploration and excavation at Napudet has resulted in the recovery of numerous new fossils including new primate finds, such as the Alesi fossil—a remarkably complete, 13 million-year-old infant ape skull.

Project leaders: Gabrielle Russo, Isaiah Nengo