The Tugen Hills (also known as Saimo) are series of hills in Baringo District, Kenya.
The Tugen Hills represent one of the few areas in Africa preserving a succession of deposits from the period of between 14 and 4 million years ago, making them an important location for the study of human (and animal) evolution. Excavations at the site conducted by Richard Leakey and others have yielded a complete skeleton of a 1.5-million-year-old elephant (1967), a new species of monkey (1969) and fossil remains of hominids from 1 to 2 million years ago.[1]
One of the oldest bipedal hominins, Orrorin tugenensis, were discover here and subsequently named after the location. [2]