Fossil legend Richard Leakey dies at 77 in Kenya

Kenya: World-renowned paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey, known for his fossil-finding and conservation work in his native Kenya, has died at 77, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta has announced.

Leakey, whose groundbreaking discoveries helped prove that humanity evolved in Africa, remained energetic into his 70s despite bouts of skin cancer, kidney and liver disease.

The cause of death was not announced. Leakey, the son of globally known anthropologists Louis and Mary Leakey, also held a number of public service leadership roles including director of the National Museums of Kenya and what became the Kenya Wildlife Service, Kenyatta’s statement said. “We are deeply saddened to learn about the news of the death of our founder,” the conservation group WildlifeDirect said. Born on December 19, 1944, Leakey was destined for palaeoanthropology – the study of the human fossil record – as the middle son of Louis and Mary Leakey, perhaps the world’s most famous discoverers of ancestral hominids. In the 1970s, he led expeditions that recalibrated the scientific understanding of human evolution with the discovery of the skulls of Homo habilis, 1.9 million years old, in 1972 and Homo erectus, 1.6 million years old, in 1975.

A Time magazine cover followed of Leakey posing with a Homo habilis mockup under the headline: How Man Became Man. Then in 1981, his fame grew further when he fronted, The Making of Mankind, a sevenpart BBC television series. Yet the most famous fossil find was yet to come: the uncovering of an extraordinary, near-complete Homo erectus skeleton during one of his digs in 1984, which was nicknamed Turkana Boy. —(Agencies)