The Olduvai Gorge Museum is located in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Northern

Tanzania Tanzania (; ), officially the United Republic of Tanzania ( sw, Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania), is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It borders Uganda to the north; Kenya to the northeast; Comoro Islands ...

on the edge of the

Olduvai Gorge The Olduvai Gorge or Oldupai Gorge in Tanzania is one of the most important paleoanthropological localities in the world; the many sites exposed by the gorge have proven invaluable in furthering understanding of early human evolution. A steep-si ...

. The museum was founded by

Mary Leakey Mary Douglas Leakey, FBA (née Nicol, 6 February 1913 – 9 December 1996) was a British paleoanthropologist who discovered the first fossilised ''Proconsul'' skull, an extinct ape which is now believed to be ancestral to humans. She also disc ...

and is now under the jurisdiction of the Tanzanian government's Department of Cultural

Antiquities Antiquities are objects from antiquity, especially the civilizations of the Mediterranean: the Classical antiquity of Greece and Rome, Ancient Egypt and the other Ancient Near Eastern cultures. Artifacts from earlier periods such as the Meso ...

and is managed by the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority. It is a

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make th ...

dedicated to the appreciation and understanding of the Olduvai Gorge and

Laetoli Laetoli is a pre-historic site located in Enduleni ward of Ngorongoro District in Arusha Region, Tanzania. The site is dated to the Plio-Pleistocene and famous for its Hominina footprints, preserved in volcanic ash. The site of the Laetoli fo ...

fossil sites.

History

Viewing platform at Olduvai Gorge Museum

The museum was founded in the late 1970s by

, an archaeologist and paleoanthropologist who conducted research in the gorge for decades. The museum was created to house and showcase paleoanthropological artifacts from the surrounding area. After Mary's death, the Olduvai Gorge Museum was put under control of the Tanzanian government's Department of Cultural Antiquities. During the mid-1990s, the

J. Paul Getty Museum The J. Paul Getty Museum, commonly referred to as the Getty, is an art museum in Los Angeles, California housed on two campuses: the Getty Center and Getty Villa. The Getty Center is located in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles and fea ...

's Department of Conservation renovated and added to the museum. This included a new wing with exhibits that were designed by the Getty Museum. The Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority replaced the original museum structure with the construction of a new museum and visitors center which opened to the public in 2018. The new museum construction included the expansion and improvement of museum exhibits, enhancing the educational experience of the museum's visitors, the addition of a cultural boma with spaces where visitors can explore aspects of Maasai culture, as well as a small restaurant and a covered theater-like viewing platform that provides visitors an inspiring view of the gorge. Both the new museum, visitor center, restaurant and theater-like viewing platform were designed and built(using quartzite stones) by Eng. Joshua Mwankunda, Manager for Cultural Heritage Department at Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority so that the exhibit halls form a ring around a central open area at the heart of the museum, mimicking the layout of a Maasai boma embracing Maasai architectural abilities.

Location

The museum is located within the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in northern

and sits along the rim of the gorge at the junction of the main gorge and the smaller side gorge. The museum is approximately 5 km beyond the turnoff from the main road that runs from

Serengeti National Park The Serengeti National Park is a large national park in northern Tanzania that stretches over . It is located entirely in eastern Mara Region and north east portion of Simiyu Region and contains over of virgin savanna. The park was established ...

to the Ngorongoro Crater.

Exhibits

The exhibits at the Olduvai Gorge Museum are centered around the paleoanthropological research and artifacts that have come from the surrounding area. There is one hall dedicated to the Leakey family and their pursuit of working at Olduvai Gorge. This hall has historical artifacts from the Olduvai Gorge area as well as charts and maps explaining the process of

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

excavation. Many of the artifacts are original but some are casts (specifically the

hominid The Hominidae (), whose members are known as the great apes or hominids (), are a taxonomic family of primates that includes eight extant species in four genera: '' Pongo'' (the Bornean, Sumatran and Tapanuli orangutan); ''Gorilla'' (the ...

fossils). The adjacent hall is dedicated solely to the Laetoli fossilized footprints. A cast that was made of part of the footprint trail in 1996 by the J. Paul Getty Museum is on display. Accompanying this are several charts and photographs describing and illustrating the process of the Laetoli Footprints creation. There is also a large illustration depicting three ''

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 no ...

'' walking through the area 3.6 million years ago. In addition to these indoor museum exhibits there are also two outdoor lecture areas. These are utilized for orientation presentations given by museum staff.

Visitors

The Olduvai Gorge Museum receives roughly 3000 visitors each day during peak season from all around the world. Most visitors arrive by safari car, stopping for lunch and a museum tour before continuing on to Serengeti National Park.

Gallery

File:Olduvai Gorge Museum.jpg, The old Olduvai Gorge Museum as it looked in 2006 File:Museum interior.jpg, Old Olduvai Gorge Museum interior File:Oldupai gorge sign.jpg, Entryway sign of the old museum

External links

The Leakey Website

The Leakey Foundation

ASU Becoming Human

Archaeological sites in Tanzania Paleoanthropological sites Museums in Tanzania Natural history museums 1970s establishments in Tanzania Museums established in the 1970s Arusha Region