The Allia Bay is a region on the east side of

Lake Turkana Lake Turkana (), formerly known as Lake Rudolf, is a 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. B ...

Kenya ) , national_anthem = "Ee Mungu Nguvu Yetu"() , image_map = , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Nairobi , coordinates = , largest_city = Nairobi , ...

. 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'' 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 ...

''. Notable people with findings at Allia Bay include: Richard Leakey,

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 British-born Norwegian music producer and DJ primarily known for the critically acclaimed single " Faded" (2015), which was certified platinum in 14 countries. He has also made several songs including ...

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

bone bed A bone bed is any geological stratum or deposit that contains bones of whatever kind. Inevitably, such deposits are sedimentary in nature. Not a formal term, it tends to be used more to describe especially dense collections such as Lagerstätte. ...

", which was likely a channel of the ancestral Omo River.

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. Leakey, Feibel, McDougall, and Walker were involved in the discovery of 12 new specimens, presumed to be a new species within the genus ''

Australopithecus ''Australopithecus'' (, ; ) is a genus of early hominins that existed in Africa during the Late Pliocene and Early Pleistocene. The genus ''Homo'' (which includes modern humans) emerged within ''Australopithecus'', as sister to e.g. ''Australopi ...

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

'' and a sister species of '' Ardipithecus ramidus''. The 12 specimens found at Allia Bay were in conjunction with an additional nine that were found at Kanapoi in

Kenya ) , national_anthem = "Ee Mungu Nguvu Yetu"() , image_map = , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Nairobi , coordinates = , largest_city = Nairobi , ...

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

,'' for which the first Kanapoi specimen is the

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of several ...

, and the later Kanapoi and Allia Bay findings are paratypes. 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 Kanapoi: 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