LEAKEY, RICHARD

born Dec. 19, 1944, Nairobi, Kenya in full Richard Erskine Frere Leakey Kenyan physical anthropologist, paleontologist, and politician responsible for extensive fossil finds of human ancestral forms in East Africa. His investigations suggested that relatively intelligent, tool-using ancestors of true man lived in eastern Africa as early as 3 million years ago, or almost twice the time span of previous estimates. The son of noted anthropologists Louis Leakey and Mary Leakey, he was originally reluctant to follow his parents' career and became a safari guide. When he found an australopithecine jaw while exploring the Lake Natron region in northeast Tanzania in 1963, he decided that he would, after all, become an anthropologist. In London, Leakey completed a two-year secondary-education program in six months; however, running out of funds and losing interest in his studies, he returned to Kenya without a university education. In 1967 he joined an expedition to the Omo River valley in Ethiopia. It was during this trip that he first noticed the site of Koobi Fora, along the shores of Lake Rudolf (Turkana) in Kenya, where he led a preliminary search that uncovered several stone tools. From this site alone in the subsequent decade, Leakey and his fellow workers uncovered some 400 hominid fossils, representing perhaps 230 individuals, making Koobi Fora the site of the richest and most varied assemblage of early human remains found to date anywhere in the world. Leakey proposed controversial interpretations of his fossil finds. In two books written with science writer Roger Lewin, Origins (1977) and People of the Lake (1978), Leakey presented his view that, some 3 million years ago, three hominid forms coexisted with each other: /a>Homo habilis, Australopithecus africanus, and Australopithecus boisei. He argued that the two australopithecine forms eventually died out and that H. habilis evolved into Homo erectus, the direct ancestor of Homo sapiens, modern human beings. He claimed to have found evidence at Koobi Fora to support this theory. Of particular importance is an almost completely reconstructed fossil skull found in more than 300 fragments in 1972 (coded as Skull 1470). Leakey believed that this skull dated from more than 2 million years ago and that it represented H. habilis. The skull created quite a stir in the scientific community because it lacked the pronounced brow of other hominid skulls. It had a cranial capacity nearly twice that of Australopithecus and more than half that of modern humans. Leakey's team went on to make further finds supporting his contention that a relatively large-brained, upright, bipedal form of Homo lived in eastern Africa as early as 2.5 million or even 3.5 million years ago. Further elaboration of Leakey's views was given in his work The Making of Mankind (1981). In 1989 Leakey was made director of the Wildlife Conservation and Management Department (the precursor to the Kenya Wildlife Services ). Devoted to the preservation of Kenya's wildlife and sanctuaries, he earned praise for reducing corruption within the KWS, instituting and maintaining a strong policy against ivory poachers, and restoring the security of the national parks. He also made numerous enemies by resisting the efforts of politicians to obtain land from wildlife sanctuaries for commercial purposes. In 1994 Leakey, who was still recovering from a 1993 plane crash in which he lost both his legs below the knee, resigned the post, citing interference by President Daniel arap Moi's government. That year he also ended his directorship (196894) of the Natural Museums of Kenya to form a new political party called Safina (the Swahili word for Noah's ark). Pressure by foreign donors and Moi's attempts to halt the growing criticism of his rule, however, led to Leakey's return as the director of the KWS in 1998. He left the post the following year after being named head of the civil service and permanent secretary to the cabinet.