Location:
Olduvai Gorge (Oldupai Gorge) is situated
in Northern Tanzania, within the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. It
lies on the road into the Serengeti National Park.
About Olduvai Gorge:
Olduvai Gorge is often referred to as the ‘birthplace of man’. The gorge is up to 90m deep and about 50km long. Layers of volcanic deposits were laid down here over a period of 2 million years allowing archeologists to read the rocks as if reading a book.
The most famous of Olduvai’s fossils was discovered by Mary Leakey in 1959 – it is 1.8 million years old, and belongs to an ape-like hominid known as Australopithecus boisei. Archaeologists believe there were at least 3 hominid species in the region about 2 million years ago, 2 of which appear to have died out. Homo erectus continued to evolve into modern man, Homo sapiens.
Visit the museum at Olduvai which displays a variety of fossils including a cast of the 3.7 million year old hominid footprints.
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