Continuing an occasional series…this is a picture of Lake Baringo, Kenya, taken from the shoreline of Betsy’s Campground in Kampi Ya Samaki (late 2004).
Lake Baringo sits in the central Rift Valley and is surrounded by fossiliferous exposures in pretty much every direction, spanning a huge time range from the earliest Miocene up to recent deposits. A number of interesting, though perhaps under discussed hominin fossils have been found in the region, including the Pliocene Tabarin mandible, several mandibles from the Pleistocene Kapthurin formation (with a large archaeological assemblage), the earliest argued Chimpanzee fossil, and the Orrorin Tugenensis material from the terminal Miocene/early Pliocene. The paleontological record of fossils from the region is vast.
I spent a month at Lake Baringo with a film crew making a documentary about the migratory birds there in 2011 and we thought the whole region was a geological, paleaeontological and ornithological treasure trove. We all felt a little uneasy about the stirrings of tourism though, and there is a fine line between the rights of the local population to make some income in this way and the need for scientists to have an unspoilt study area.
It is a gorgeous location. When I was there in 2004 the most striking thing about the area was how poor the region was relative to some of the surrounding areas. We were there outside of what would be considered a tourist season, but there was basically nothing going on back then. I’d be interested to see how it has changed in the intervening eight years.