News
JUNE 2025
Visit of Prof. Kevin Hatala from Chatham University on 20th June 2025 (see photos below). With each visit, more information is discovered, but sadly, despite meaningful wishes to help, the site has not been protected from rain and other damage from the environment following his visit.
Prof. Hatala measured the prints and documented in his report “Fossil footprints are exciting because they provide vivid snapshots that bring our fossil relatives to life. With these kinds of data, we can see how living individuals, millions of years ago, were moving around their environments and potentially interacting with each other, or even with other animals …That’s something that we can’t really get from bones or stone tools.
The insights they give us, and the questions they raise, can be rather unique. For example, until now we have struggled to find the necessary data to know whether and how ancient human species may have coexisted and interacted during
the early Pleistocene.”
At the same time, Louise Leakey mentioned that skeleton excavations and analysis were providing valuable understanding to the paleobiology of species and that there would be four different hominin speicies overlapped in eastern Africa. Prof. Hatala talks of two different fossil human relatives occupying the same landscape and likely interacting with each other.
He adds “While skeletal fossils have long provided the primary evidence for studying human evolution, new data from fossil footprints reveal fascinating details about the evolution of human anatomy and locomotion, as well as further clues about ancient human behaviors and environments.”
The new sign that Rutto made and installed in 2024 to welcome visitors to his community prehistoric site.
The hominid’s head sculpture on the sign was given to Rutto by the late Perry Hennessy, who ran Island Camp Resort and who employed Rutto as head waiter there. Rutto asked him for it and Perry replied “if it is good for your prehistoric site, you can take it.” A nice touch in memory of Perry.
Now everyone loves having their photo taken with the sign and sculpture. When will you have your photo taken ?
In February 2025, twelve experts, geologists from Kenya and Spain and members from Kenya's National Museum visited the site. The object of their visit was to determine whether the site would qualify to become a Geosite.
It was verbally considered yes and it was also urgently recommended that the site be protected with a fence and a roof over the hominid footprints.
Rutto will be contacted for the planning of the next steps.
In September 2024, Rutto made a new discovery of a group of ten to fifteen antelope footprints walking together, just 100 metres from the hominid footprints.
