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Years of Field Work:
33
Leakey Luck?
"It’s perseverence"
Education:
B. Sc. and Ph.D. in Zoology for the University of North Wales, UK
Year of Birth:
1942
Childhood Hobby:
Doing jigsaw puzzles with the pieces turned upside down.
Motivation:
"You’re always expecting to find something."
Heir Apparent:
Daughter Louise
Quote:
“One of these early
hominids was ancestral to us, but
we don’t know which. It could well be something we haven’t yet
found.”
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Watch an interview with Dr. Meave Leakey as she talks about the
discovery of a new human ancestor.
Real Audio Windows Media
Institute of Human Origins
www.becominghuman.org/
Get news on the latest developments in paleontology, find a list of additional sources including a
glossary of terms, and watch a documentary in
broadband, hosted by institute director and Lucy’s
discoverer, Donald Johanson.
The Leakey Foundation
www.leakeyfoundation.org/
Learn more about the Leakey family history and the projects funded by their foundation.
The National Museums of Kenya
www.museums.or.ke/
Learn more about resources for researchers including the Institute of Primate Research, started by Dr. Louis Leakey in 1960.
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| Photographs by Robert Campbell Copyright National Museums of Kenya |
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| To print the whole National Geographic story, click here. |
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This Week’s Questions. Click on a question for a full response.
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| Name: | Kevin Reiser |
| Subject: | Kenya Man |
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| Question: |
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| Has anyone/National Geographic done a computerized image of how the Kenya
man would have appeared? If so, where can we see it? |
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| Leakey’s Answer: |
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| BBC Horizon program aired a new documentary on human evolution called The Ape
That Took Over the World, on Thursday, September 27 at 9 p.m. This showed reconstructions of Kenyanthropus by German
artist Wolfgang Schnaubelt.
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| Name: | Stephanie |
| Subject: | Kenya man |
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| Question: |
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| Did you expect to find Kenya man?
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| Leakey’s Answer: |
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| I expected that we might find a species that differed from Australopithecus
afarensis, but I could not have predicted what it would look like.
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| Name: | Amanda |
| Subject: | Lecturing? |
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| Question: |
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| Will you be lecturing in the States anytime in the near future?
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| Leakey’s Answer: |
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| I will not be lecturing in the United States. Louise is speaking for NGS sometime in
the near future. [You can catch Louise Leakey’s lecture on Kenya man at the
Aronoff Center for the Arts in Cincinnati on April 18, 2002, and at the Benaroya Hall
in Seattle on April 24. For tickets, contact the Aronoff in Cincinnati and the Arts and
Lectures program in Seattle.]
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| Name: | Jojo Robyn |
| Subject: | Is he the missing link? |
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| Question: |
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| Ms. Leaky, Regarding “flat-faced Kenya man”: is he the missing link to
the world’s hominid research?
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| Leakey’s Answer: |
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| This new discovery is just another link. There are many links, and they are all missing
until we find them! There are many lines, also many side branches coming off the main chain.
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| Name: | Haley MacKenzie |
| Subject: | Kenya man |
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| Question: |
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| Did you find the skull basically all together or in tiny fragments?
(Great job on finding it!)
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| Leakey’s Answer: |
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| The skull was mostly in one piece but with large cracks through some of the main
pieces. Several parts of the face that had already been eroded out on the surface
were broken. It was some of these pieces that initially drew the attention of the
discover, Justus Erus. Justus comes from the Turkana area, and it had long been his
dream to make such a discovery.
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