Richard Leakey to speak at Kenyon

Richard Leakey, member of the celebrated fossil-hunting family and a world figure in conservation, will speak at Kenyon in early October. Leakey will present a lecture, "Evolutionary Opportunities: Ancient and Modern," at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, October 6, in Rosse Hall.

A son of the famed fossil-hunters Louis and Mary Leakey, whose discoveries in Africa contributed so much to the understanding of human origins, Richard Leakey decided at an early age that he wanted nothing to do with paleoanthropology. After leaving high school, he worked as an animal trapper and a supplier of skeletons to institutions, and he started a photographic safari company.

He was drawn back to fossil-hunting, however. Leakey secured funds from the National Geographic Society to run an excavation at a site he had discovered near Lake Rudolf (now Lake Turkana) in Kenya, and in 1968, when he was appointed director of the National Museum of Kenya, he commenced fossil-hunting at Rudolf. The expedition yielded large numbers of fossils, including a steady stream of hominid fossils that dazzled the scientific world. Most spectacular were the fossils ER 1470, a Homo habilis skull found in 1972, and ER 3733, a Homo erectus skull found in 1975.

Among Leakey's most important discoveries are WT 15000, nicknamed the "Turkana Boy," a nearly complete skeleton of a Homo erectus boy found in 1984, and WT 17000, the first skull of the species Australopithecus aethiopicus , discovered in 1985. Leakey has written or co-written more than one hundred scientific articles and books, including The Origin of Humankind , Origins Reconsidered , and The Sixth Extinction .

This last book examines the pattern of mass extinctions in the fossil record and argues that such catastrophes may be a major creative force shaping life's flow, not a series of occasional interruptions. Homo sapiens , according to Leakey, may be in the process of causing a catastrophe of its own.

Leakey also emerged as an influential, inspirational, and sometimes controversial figure in conservation and African environmental politics. From 1989 to 1994, he directed the Kenya Wildlife Service, where he was successful in combating elephant and rhinoceros poaching and in overhauling Kenya's troubled park system. After political opposition forced him to resign, he started a wildlife consulting agency. He has been secretary general of the Kenyan opposition party Safina and in 1997 was elected to an opposition seat in the Kenyan parliament.

In 1993, the crash of a plane Leaky was piloting resulted in the loss of both his legs below the knee. Although unable to do field work, he remains interested in paleoanthropology. His wife, Maeve, continues to work in the field. In 1995 she and her team described a new hominid species, Australopithecus anamensis , and in 2001 another new species, Kenyanthropus platyops.

Leakey's visit to the College is sponsored by Faculty Lectureships and is part of the biology seminar series.