Discoveries at Oldupai Gorge, the Famous Cradle of Humankind Oldupai Gorge is a very important paleoanthropological site located in Tanzania in the Great Rift Valley. For more than a century, researchers have been excavating in this area, and cumulatively they have found hundreds of fossils and stone tools which date back millions of years. The site was made famous by Louis and Mary Leakey and is a UNESCO World Heritage site. EurekAlert! reports that, despite the long history of surveys and excavations at the Oldupai Gorge, there has been a lack of ecological studies associated with the cultural remains which have been found there. This allows the new study to cast light on the environmental contexts in which the early hominins lived.