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Kenya: Richard Leakey - Fossil Hunter Who Helped Prove Humans Evolved in Africa, Dies At 77
DW, 2 January 2022
Paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey was the middle son of world-renowned anthropologists Louis and Mary Leakey. He helped uncover evidence to prove humankind evolved in Africa. Read more »
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Kenya: Honour Finds Kenya's Oldest Fossil Hunter Kamoya Kimeu
East African, 18 July 2021
On an overcast Sunday afternoon in May 2021, a small gathering of people watched in Nairobi as the one of the world's most successful fossil finders was awarded a PhD degree. Read more »
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Kenya: Leakey's Memoir Uncovers Story of Human Evolution
East African, 12 August 2021
Palaeontologist Meave Leakey has spent a lifetime in the hot, arid sands of northern Kenya uncovering the story of human evolution. Her new memoir, The Sediments of Time: My… Read more »
Kenya's Leakey Who Helped Prove Humans Evolved in Africa Dies
The paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey, renowned for uncovering evidence that humanity's ancestors evolved in Africa has died at the age of 77, President Uhuru Kenyatta has announced. Leaky was born on December 19, 1944 in Nairobi, Kenya.
He was the son of internationally renowned anthropologists Louis and Mary Leakey whose research focused on ancestral hominids. The National Geographic Society gave Leakey his first grant at age 23 to dig on the shores of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya.
Leakey's expeditions in the 1970s altered many's understanding of human evolution, especially with the discovery of a 1.9-million-year-old skull of Homo habilis in 1972 and a 1.6-million-year-old skull of Homo erectus in 1975. In 1981, Leakey narrated a seven-part BBC series called "The Making of Mankind." In 1984, he uncovered a near complete Homo erectus skeleton that became known as "Turkana Boy."
