Omo Kibish Formation

The Omo Kibish Formation or simply Kibish Formation is a geological formation in the Lower Omo Valley of southwestern Ethiopia. It is named after the nearby Omo River and is subdivided into four members known as Members I-IV. The members are numbered in the order in which they were deposited and date between 196 ka ~ 13-4 ka. Omo Kibish and the neighboring formations have produced a rich paleoanthropological record with many hominin and stone tool finds. The Kibish formation, in particular, is most notable for Richard Leakey's work there in 1967 during which he and his team found one of the oldest remains of anatomically modern Homo sapiens. Known as Omo Kibish 1, the fossil was dated to 196 ± 5 ka old and is among two other Omo remains that were found in Member I. The Omo fossils were more recently re-dated to approximately 233,000 ka old. In the early 2000s a research boom enriched the knowledge base about the Kibish Formation. Study of the faunal remains and stone tools provided insight into the archeological associations of Homo sapiens and thereby their behaviors and the complex environmental contexts in which they lived and evolved. ()