Richard Leakey

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

Richard Leakey was born on 19 December 1944 in Nairobi to Louis Leakey, curator of the Coryndon Museum, and Mary Leakey, director of the Leakey excavations at Olduvai. As a small boy he lived in Nairobi with his parents and brothers Jonathan and Philip. In 1956, aged eleven, Leakey fell from his horse, fracturing his skull and nearly dying. The source states this incident saved his parents' marriage: Louis was considering leaving Mary for his secretary Rosalie Osborn, but Leakey begged his father from his sickbed not to leave, and Louis broke up with Rosalie. As a teenager, Leakey borrowed £500 from his parents for a Land Rover and went into the trapping and skeleton supply business with Kamoya Kimeu. The bone business turned into a safari business in 1961. In 1962 he obtained a private pilot licence and took tours to the Olduvai Gorge. From a casual aerial survey he noted the potential of Lake Natron's shores for palaeontology. In 1964, on his second Lake Natron expedition, Leakey met archaeologist Margaret Cropper. He completed his high school requirements in six months, passed entrance exams for college, but in 1965 he and Margaret decided to marry and return to Kenya. Their daughter Anna was born in 1969, the same year they divorced. He married Meave Epps in 1970 and they had two daughters, Louise (born 1972) and Samira (1974).

Reader's Guide

Richard Leakey's significance in paleoanthropology begins with the Omo expedition of 1967, where his contingent was attacked by crocodiles and their wooden boat destroyed. On site, Kamoya Kimeu found a hominid fossil that Louis identified as the oldest Homo sapiens known at that time, dating to 160,000 years. In 1968, at a National Geographic Society meeting, Leakey asked the committee to divert $25,000 intended for Omo to new excavations at Koobi Fora under his leadership. He won, but chairman Leonard Carmichael told him he had better find something or never 'come begging at our door again'. His teams made major finds: a Paranthropus boisei cranium in 1969, a Homo rudolfensis skull (KNM ER 1470) in 1972, and a Homo erectus skull (KNM ER 3733) in 1975. In 1984, Kamoya Kimeu discovered Turkana Boy, a nearly complete Homo ergaster skeleton who died 1.6 million years ago at about age 9–12. Leakey and Roger Lewin described this find in their book Origins Reconsidered (1992). Shortly after, Leakey's team discovered the 'Black Skull' (KNM WT 17000) of a new species, Australopithecus aethiopicus. In 1989, President Daniel Arap Moi appointed Leakey head of the Wildlife Conservation and Management Department in response to international outcry over elephant poaching. He created special, well-armed anti-poaching units authorised to shoot poachers on sight, dramatically reducing the poaching menace.

Did You Know?

• In 1956, aged eleven, Leakey fell from his horse, fracturing his skull and nearly dying; this incident reportedly saved his parents' marriage when he begged his father not to leave for another woman.
• Leakey borrowed £500 from his parents for a Land Rover and started a trapping and skeleton supply business with Kamoya Kimeu, which later turned into a safari business in 1961.
• During the 1967 Omo expedition, Leakey's contingent was attacked by crocodiles, which destroyed their wooden boat, and they barely escaped with their lives.
• In 1968, Leakey successfully diverted $25,000 in National Geographic funding from his father's Omo expedition to his own new excavations at Koobi Fora.
• The nearly complete skeleton of Turkana Boy, discovered by Kamoya Kimeu in 1984, died 1.6 million years ago at about age 9–12.