Orrorin
extinct genus of mammals
Orrorin is an extinct genus of great ape within the tribe of Hominini from the Miocene Lukeino Formation and Pliocene Mabaget Formation, both of Kenya.
The type species is O. tugenensis, named in 2001, and a second species, O. praegens, was assigned to the genus in 2022.
Discovery and naming
Orrorin tugenensis
The first part of the holotype, a lower molar, was discovered by Martin Pickford in 1974 and described by Pickford (1975).
The team that found the rest of the holotype of O. tugenensis was led by Brigitte Senut and Martin Pickford from the French National Museum of Natural History. Starting from 17 October 2000, 20 fossils were found at four sites in the Lukeino Formation, Kenya: of these, the fossils at Cheboit and Aragai are the oldest (6.1 Ma), while those in Kapsomin and Kapcheberek are found in the upper levels of the formation (5.7 Ma).
Orrorin tugenensis was named and described by Senut et al. (2001).
Orrorin praegens
The second species, O. praegens, was first described by Ward (1985) and Ward & Hill (1988), and was initially described as Homo antiquus praegens by Ferguson (1989) based on specimen KNM-TH 13150, a mandible discovered in the Pliocene Mabaget Formation of Kenya during the early 1980s. The mandible is known as the Tabarin mandible, which was previously classified within Ardipithecus ramidus (or cf. A. cf.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Orrorin” is extinct genus of mammals. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Orrorin, extinct and genus, not as a finished interpretation.
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Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16522261. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2001, 2022, 1974 and 1975.
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This entry incorporates text from “Orrorin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.