Omo River
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How it came to be
In south-western Ethiopia, near Lake Turkana, the lower valley of the Omo holds layers laid down in the Pliocene and Pleistocene. Fossils found here, especially of Homo gracilis, are considered fundamental to the study of human evolution, together with fragments of Australopithecus and stone tools among the oldest evidence of human technical activity.
Scientific research began in 1966. In 1967 Richard Leakey's team found the remains known as Omo I in the Kibish Formation, one of the oldest remains of anatomically modern Homo sapiens. A study in 2022 dated it to about 233,000 years ago.
Researchers have built dating scales for the deposits spanning 1 to 3.5 million years. The lower valley of the Omo was inscribed in 1980.
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