In 1965, a research team led by Bryan Patterson from Harvard University discovered a single arm bone (KNM-KP 271) of an early human at Kanapoi in northern Kenya, but without additional fossils Patterson could not confidently identify the species to which it belonged. In 1994 Meave Leakey and her team found numerous teeth and fragments of bone at the same site, which they identified as a new species. This they named Australopithecus anamensis (‘anam’ means ‘lake’ in the Turkana language). Researchers have since found other Au. anamensis fossils at nearby sites (including Allia Bay), all of which date between about 4.2 million and 3.9 million years old. With I. McDougall and A. Walker.

In 1998 and 1999, working in the Lake Turkana region of northern Kenya, Meave Leakey and her team found a cranium and other fossil remains of a 3.5 million year old hominin with a mixture of features unseen in other early human fossils. Noting the unusual combination of traits, Leakey and her team designated the hominin a new genus and species: Kenyanthropus platyops, or “flat-faced human from Kenya.” With F. Spoor, F. H. Brown, P. N. Gathogo, C. Kiarie,, L. N. Leakey, and I. McDougall.