![]() KNM-WT 40000 was recovered from the Kataboi Member, 8 m (26 ft) below the 3.4 million year old Tulu Bor Tuff, and 12 m (39 ft) above the 3.57 million year old Lokochot Tuff. The specimens were recovered near the Nabetili tributary of the Lomekwi river in a mudstone layer of the Nachukui Formation. The 1998–1999 field season subsequently uncovered 34 more craniodental hominin specimens, but the research team was unable to determine if these can be placed into the same species as the former two specimens (that is, if multiple species were present at the site). In August 1999 at the Lomewki site, research assistant Justus Erus discovered an uncharacteristically flat-faced australopithecine skull, specimen KNM-WT 40000. In August 1998, field technician Blasto Onyango discovered a hominin partial left maxilla (upper jaw), specimen KNM-WT 38350, on the Kenyan Lomekwi dig site by Lake Turkana, overseen by prominent paleoanthropologists Louise and Meave Leakey. Location of Lomekwi, on the western shore of Lake Turkana, Kenya Kenyanthropus seems to have lived on a lakeside or floodplain environment featuring forests and grasslands. The knappers were using volcanic rocks collected no more than 100 m (330 ft) from the site. It may have been manufactured by Kenyanthropus, but it is unclear if multiple species were present at the site or not. The Lomekwi site also yielded the earliest stone tool industry, the Lomekwian, characterised by the rudimentary production of simple flakes by pounding a core against an anvil or with a hammerstone. Multiple australopithecine species may have coexisted by foraging for different food items ( niche partitioning), which may be reason why these apes anatomically differ in features related to chewing. Kenyanthropus is most recognisable by an unusually flat face and small teeth for such an early hominin, with values on the extremes or beyond the range of variation for australopithecines in regard to these features. Before its naming in 2001, Australopithecus afarensis was widely regarded as the only australopithecine to exist during the Middle Pliocene, but Kenyanthropus evinces a greater diversity than once acknowledged. ![]() ![]() platyops, but may also include the 2 million year old Homo rudolfensis, or K. Kenyanthropus is a hominin genus identified from the Lomekwi site by Lake Turkana, Kenya, dated to 3.3 to 3.2 million years ago during the Middle Pliocene. † Kenyanthropus rudolfensis? (Alexeev, 1986).† Kenyanthropus platyops (Leakey et al., 2001).Cast of KNM-WT 40000 at the Cantonal Museum of Geology, Lausanne ![]()
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