The Tugen Hills (also known as Saimo) are a series of hills in Baringo County, Kenya. They are located in the central-western portion of Kenya.

The Tugen Hills represent one of the few areas in Africa preserving a succession of deposits from the period of between 14 and 4 million years ago, making them an important location for the study of human (and animal) evolution. Excavations at the site conducted by Richard Leakey and others have yielded a complete skeleton of a 1.5-million-year-old elephant (1967), a new species of monkey (1969) and fossil remains of hominids from 1 to 2 million years ago. In 1974 Martin Pickford found a singular fossilised molar of a Orrorin tugenensis there, and that encouraged him to return 30 years later. In 1975, he named the fossilised finds Orrorin tugenensis, which means: “Original man of Tugen Hills”. This hominid lived from 6.2 MYA to 5.6 MYA.

Six-million-year-old hominid fossils were discovered here in 2000 by Brigitte Senut and Martin Pickford; the species was named Orrorin tugenensis after the location. This was the oldest hominid ever discovered in Kenya, and the second oldest in the world after Sahelanthropus tchadensis.

Sources

Millennium Man - Orrorin tugenensis

Gignos Citations