Olduvai Gorge is a steep-sided ravine about 48 km long and up to 90 m deep, cut into ancient lake-bed sediments on the eastern edge of the Serengeti plains, inside the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Its exposed beds span roughly the last 1.9 million years and have produced at least 85 hominid fossils, including Homo habilis, Homo erectus and Paranthropus boisei. Louis and Mary Leakey worked here from the 1930s. In July 1959 Mary Leakey found the skull of Zinjanthropus (Paranthropus boisei) at the FLK site, and in 1960 the jaw that became the type specimen of Homo habilis. Together with the 3.6-million-year-old hominin footprints at nearby Laetoli, these finds are why the region is called the cradle of mankind. The Olduvai Gorge Museum on the rim, rebuilt in 2017 and one of the largest on-site museums in Africa, sets out the stratigraphy, tools and fossils. Most visitors stop for an hour or two on the drive between Ngorongoro and the Serengeti; guided walks to the excavation sites can be arranged.
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