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Renowned paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey, best known for his work searching and conserving fossils in his native Kenya, has died at the age of 77, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta has announced.
Leakey, with his groundbreaking discoveries, helped prove that humanity has evolved in Africa, despite continuing to thrive until the age of 70 despite skin cancer, kidney and liver disease.
“This afternoon … I have received with great sorrow the sad news of the death of Dr. Richard Erskine Frere Leakey,” Kenyatta said in a statement.
Born on December 19, 1944, Leakey was dedicated to paleoanthropology – the study of the human fossil record – as the middle son of Louis and Mary Leakey, perhaps the most famous hominid discoverers of the world’s ancestors.
Initially, Leakey tried to drive a safari, but things changed when he won a National Geographic Society research grant at the age of 23 to drill on the shores of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya, despite no formal archaeological training.
In the 1970s, in 1972, 1.9 million-year-old Homo habilis and 1.6 million-year-old Homo erectus, in 1975, led expeditions that recalibrated the scientific understanding of human evolution that found the skulls.
Leakey posed for the cover of Time magazine with a demo of Homo habilis: How Man Became Man. Then, in 1981, his popularity grew further, with The Making of Mankind directing the BBC’s seven-part TV series.
However, the most famous fossil discovery was yet to come: in a 1984 excavation, the discovery of an almost complete skeleton of Homo erectus, nicknamed Turkana Boy.
Fighting ivory hunters
When the killings of African elephants reached their peak in the late 1980s, fueled by insatiable demand for ivory, Leakey was one of the world’s leading voices against the then-illegal global ivory trade.
President Daniel arap Moi appointed Leakey in 1989 to head the national wildlife agency, which would soon be named Kenya Wildlife Service or KWS.
That year, he made a spectacular advertising appearance by burning an ivory pyre, and set a 12-ton section on fire to indicate that the elephants had no removed value.
He maintained his nervousness, unforgivingly, in imposing an order to kill the gunmen.
In 1993, his small Cessna crashed into the Rift Valley, where he made his name. He survived but lost both legs.
“At the time, I was being threatened and living with the armed guards. But I decided not to be a playwright and said, “They tried to kill me.” I chose to move on, ”he told the Financial Times.
Leakey was ousted from the KWS a year later and began a third career as a prominent opposition politician, joining the chorus of voices against Moir’s corrupt government.
His political career was less successful, however, and he returned in 1998, when Moik appointed him head of the Kenyan civil service, putting him in charge of fighting official corruption. That task was impossible, however, and he resigned just two years later.
In 2015, as an elephant hunting crisis hit Africa, President Kenyatta asked Leakey to take over the leadership of the KWS again, this time as chairman of the board, a position he would hold for three years.
Gentle and seemingly devoid of personal vanity, Leakey flatly refused to give in to health problems.
“Richard was a very good friend and a true loyal Kenyan. May he rest in peace,” Paula Kahumbu Wildlife Direct, head of the conservation group set up by Leakey, posted on Twitter.
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