Sibiloi

Sibiloi National Park was created in 1973 on the north-eastern shore of Lake Turkana, in Marsabit county, and protects some 157,085 hectares of semi-desert landscape of lava plains, volcanic hills and fossil forest.

Its principal value is palaeoanthropological. The Koobi Fora deposits, along its shore, constitute one of the most productive hominin sites in the world: since the campaigns begun by Richard Leakey in the late 1960s, hundreds of hominin fossils have been recovered there, among them specimens of Paranthropus boisei, Homo habilis and Homo erectus, alongside an enormous collection of associated fauna and stone tools. The stratigraphic sequence allows the finds to be dated precisely thanks to the interbedded volcanic ash layers, which is why the site has become a reference for the chronology of human evolution in East Africa.

The park also preserves fauna adapted to semi-desert, with Grevy's zebra, beisa oryx, gerenuk and large concentrations of Nile crocodile along the shore, and a petrified forest of trunks several million years old. Sibiloi is one of the three components of the World Heritage property Lake Turkana National Parks.