In 1984, during a prospection at Lake Turkana, Kenya, he had updated the almost complete skeleton of the “Turkana boy”, a “homo erectus” of 1.63 meters, dead 1 there is 1 , 5 million years.
Le Monde with AFP
Global renowned paleontologist and politician, Kenyan Richard Leakey died at the age of 77. “This afternoon, I learned with a deep sadness the news of Dr. Richard Erskine Frere Leakey, former Kenya fauna department,” said President Uhuru Kenyatta in a statement, Sunday January 2nd.
Son of Louis and Mary Leakey, two of the most famous hominid skeleton discovers, Richard Leakey, born in Kenya on December 19, 1944, it was apparently destined for Paleoanthropology. A destiny that he tries to flee in his early years, working as a safari guide.
It works, however, in the footsteps of his parents when he obtains, at 23 years, without a university formation, a scholarship of the National Geographic Society for archaeological research on the shores of Lake Turkana, in northern Kenya, the first of a long list of excavations in this inhospitable semi-desert country.
In the 1970s, he leads several expeditions crowned with major and unpublished discoveries, including the first skull skulls (1.9 million years old) in 1972 and homo erectus (1.6 million of years) in 1975. Its notoriety is made: in 1977, The Time magazine devotes its “a” ; In 1981, the BBC publishes a documentary in seven episodes, of which it is the narrator and presenter, on the evolution of humanity.
His most famous discovery dates from 1984, during a prospection at Tukana Lake, where he had updated a quasi-complete skeleton of homo erectus of 1.63 meters, death there is 1.5 million million Years: The “Turkana’s boy”, the most complete fossil ever found from one of our ancestors.
Fight against poachers
In 1989, he was asked by the president of the time, Daniel Arap me, to take the head of the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS). There is a vigorous campaign against elephant ivory poaching.
In 1993, his little Cessna plane crashes in the Rift Valley, Kenya. It is amputated from both legs as a result of the accident. “At the time, there were regular threats against me and I lived with armed guards, but I made the decision not to dramatize and not tell me” we tried to kill me, “says he in 2015 at Financial Times. I chose to continue living. “
It is forced to leave the KWS a year later and starts in politics by joining the many critical voices of the corrupt regime of the autocrat me. His opponent career is short-lived and Daniel Arap me convinced, in 1998, to lead the fight against corruption. The task is impossible, he throws the sponge two years later.
In 2015, because of a new poaching crisis, another president, Uhuru Kenyatta, appealed to him to take over the reins of the KWS, this time as chairman of the board, a position he occupies until 2018.
A cancer had ravaged his skin, his hair scarcs testified to the weight of the years, he had also suffered from liver diseases and rehearsal kidneys. But, over 70, he still produced his wine in a farm of the Rift Valley.