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A new round of field research was initiated at Peninj in 1995 by a Spanish team led by one of us (MD-R.) with a research project designed to shed light on some of the major paleoanthropological questions related to the adaptation of Plio-Pleistocene hominids to the west of Lake Natron. Previous research suggested that Peninj could have been a fairly open ecosystem between 2 Ma and 1 Ma (Isaac, 1965, 1967; Denys, 1987; Geraads, 1987). It also showed that the basin could be suitable for studying the influence of climatological and geomorphological changes of the landscape on hominid adaptive patterns. Most regions with Plio-Pleistocene paleontological and archaeological records seem to have embraced a wide range of habitats with closed vegetation environments being important parts of the landscape. In those places in which multidisciplinary paleoenvironmental research has been undertaken, such as Olduvai, the indications are that closed vegetation habitats seem to have been well represented (Bonnefille, 1984; Cerling & Hay, 1986; Sikes, 1994; Peters & Blumenschine, 1995; Shipman & Harris, 1988; Marean, 1989; Plummer & Bishop, 1994). Preliminary results suggest, in contrast, that Peninj may have displayed, a limited ecological variation with a predominance of open vegetation environments. Hominid adaptation to this type of ecosystem must have been different from other contemporary areas. Constraints imposed by the availability of vegetable food, raw materials, shade and refuge areas, and a hypothetical higher presence of carnivores as would correspond to open habitats, thus limiting the availability of scavengeable …