hot springs in the semi-arid southern Kenya Rift Valley. Today this harsh lacustrine environment excludes most organisms except microbial extremophiles, a few invertebrates (mostly insects), highly adapted fish (Alcolapia sp.), and birds including flamingos. Burrows discovered in outcrops of the High Magadi Beds (~25–9 ka) that predate the modern saline (trona) pan show that beetles and other invertebrates inhabit this extreme environment when conditions become more favourable. Burrows (cm-scale) preserved in magadiite in the High Magadi Beds are filled with mud, silt and sand from overlying sediments. Their stratigraphic context reveals upward-shallowing cycles from mud to interlaminated mud-magadiite to magadiite in dm-scale units. The burrows were formed when the lake floor became fresher and oxygenated, after a period when magadiite precipitated in shallow saline waters. The burrows, probably produced by beetles, show that trace fossils can provide evidence for short-term (possibly years to decades) changes in the contemporary environment that might not otherwise be recognised or preserved physically or chemically in the sediment record. Magadi township lies on the lake's east shore, and is home to the Magadi Soda factory, owned by Tata India since December 2005. This factory produces soda ash, which has a range of industrial uses. The lake is featured in Fernando Meirelles's film The Constant Gardener, which is based on the book of the same name by John le Carré, and is used as a stand-in for Lake Turkana in the north of Kenya, where the book and film are set. A causeway that crosses the lake provides access to the area west of the lake (Nguruman Escarpment). Recently accommodation for tourists is provided in air conditioned canvas tents. See also Lake Magadi another alkaline lake in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Northern Tanzania. Lake Makgadikgadi. a paleo lake once situated in the Kalahari desert in Botswana until 10,000 years ago. References Baker, B.H. 1958. Geology of the Magadi area. Report of the Geological Survey of Kenya, 42, 81 pp. Behr, H.J. 2002. Magadiite and Magadi chert: a critical analysis of the silica sediments in the Lake Magadi Basin, Kenya. SEPM Special Publication 73, p. 257-273. Eugster, H.P. 1970. Chemistry and origin of the brines from Lake Magadi, Kenya. Mineralogical Society of America Special Paper, No. 3, p. 215-235. Eugster, H.P. 1980. Lake Magadi, Kenya, and its Pleistocene precursors. In Nissenbaum, A. (Editor) Hypersaline brines and evaporitic environments. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp. 195–232. Jones, B.F., Eugster, H.P.,