The area also hosts a remarkable collection of
early hominin artifact sites, which are in danger of being damaged or destroyed by the extraction industry's boom and attendant economic activity.
The Lomekwi area where the tools were found had already produced the fossil skull of
early hominin Kenyanthropus platyops by Meave and her team, and the West Turkana Archaeological Project has previously discovered the
earliest artifacts from the Oldowan culture known from Kenya, and the world's oldest Acheulean handaxes.