The Koobi Fora Formation, located in the Turkana Basin of northern Kenya, is one of the richest and most famous hominin fossil beds in east Africa (Harris et al. 2006). Two footprint sites have been excavated in this basin to date one close to Ileret and a second slightly younger site close to Koobi Fora.
The tracks close to the village of Ileret data from ~1.52 Ma and were reported in 2009 within the Okote Member of the Koobi Fora Formation (FwJj14E; lat 4°18′ 18′ 44″N, long 36°16′ 16′ 16″E; Bennett et al. 2009). They are younger than the mid-Pliocene (3.66 Ma) tracks at Laetoli (Leakey and Hay 1979) but are the oldest in the world attributed to the genus Homo. This site has been excavated since 2006, and during 2013/2014 additional satellite excavations were dug (Roach et al. 2016; Hatala et al. 2016a, 2017). The main site consists of an eroding bluff of sediment capped unconformably by Holocene sediments (Galana Boi Formation; Feibel et al. 1989). Within the main site, two hominin...
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Bennett, M.R. (2018). Ileret Footprints. In: Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51726-1_1890-2
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