Richard Leakey

Richard Leakey (born the December 19th 1944 with Nairobi) is a paleoanthropologist Kenya N. It is the second of three wire of Louis and Mary Leakey. He worked in the part Is Africa, and in particular with the Kenya before implying himself in the policy of this country.

After having had to give up its studies, he discovered his taste for the Paléontologie by carrying out a forwarding on a site of Fossile S which he had discovered by flying over it. Noting that its work was not taken with serious because of its lack of diplomas, it left for England in order to resume its academic works. After six months, however, it returned at his place to start again its Safari S and was never graduate.

Whereas his/her parents worked primarily in Tanzania in the Gorges of Olduvai, Richard Leakey extended work of Paléontologie to another part of the Vallée of the great rift to the north of the Kenya.

Its principal discoveries took place around the Lac Turkana (in the past lake Rudolph) with the Kenya. The first major discoveries were carried out by Richard Leakey and his team in the east of the Lac Turkana in the years 1970: many fossil remainders of Homo habilis , Homo rudolfensis , Homo ergaster (or African Homo erectus ).

The works of R. Leakey include/understand the origins of the Man , Those of the lake Turkana (both in collaboration with Roger Lewin), the illustrated origin of the species and the birth of the Man .

More recently, it is the west coast of the Lac Turkana which delivered the most spectacular Fossile S, in particular the boy of Turkana , discovered in 1984 by Kamoya Kimeu during a prospection. This fossil, inventoried under code KNM-WT 15000, is to date the skeleton of most complete Homo ergaster that one knows. Old teenager of about fifteen years, the paleoanthropologists estimate that at the adulthood it would have exceeded the size of 1,8m, revealing that there is nearly 2 unquestionable million years of our ancestors could already have a stoutness similar to that of the Homo sapiens . Leakey and Roger Lewin tell the history of their discovery in Réexamen of the origins (1992). Little time after the discovery of the Boy of Turkana, Leakey and its team discovered a cranium pertaining to a new species, Australopithecus aethiopicus (WT 17000).

Richard Leakey was also the director of the services of safeguarding of the wild life of Kenya, role in which it initiated the practices of destruction of the Ivoire of elephant taken again to the poachers.

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