Along the middle Atbara River, Pleistocene alluvial sediments dated to ~200 to 20 ka are exposed in eastern Sudan over a length of about 200 km with a maximum thickness of 50 m. The Atbara River today has its headwaters in the northern Ethiopian Plateau and is the last major tributary of the Nile before it flows through the Sahara. Previous studies and our fieldwork since 2018 have resulted in extensive finds of fossil terrestrial...

Geological evidence and geodynamic modelling suggest that the Nile river system has been largely stable since its origins ~30 Ma. The Nile could have provided a long-term migration route for vertebrates including hominins between Eastern and Northern Africa. However, other geological data contradict such an old stabilisation of the course of the Nile. Fieldwork along the middle stretches of the Atbara River, the last tributary to the Nile before it crosses the Sahara, provides evidence...