Word: fossils
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Young Leakey's self-confidence was justified; the Turkana region has proved to be an anthropological mother lode. In a basin several kilometers deep, walls of strata lie exposed, many-layered sandwiches of volcanic ash and ancient sediments containing the remains of complete prehistoric environments. Organizing a team of fossil hunters, Leakey established a base camp at Koobi Fora, a mound at the inboard end of a long, crocodile-infested sand spit that curves out into the lake. Then he began following his nose?with remarkable success. Turkana has yielded the richest accumulation of remnants of man and his predecessors...
...untrained upstart without proper academic credentials. But most of his colleagues believe he has more than made up in acquired knowledge for any lack of academic initials to place after his name. Yale's Pilbeam calls Leakey the "organizing genius" of modern paleoanthropology (the study of fossil hominids). Mary Leakey, a vigorous, cigar-smoking woman of 64 who still puts in eight hours a day exploring Olduvai, is also impressed. She says her son "is rather better than Louis was. I'm quite proud...
...Leakey will lead a team to search south of Lake Turkana at a site called Suguta. The region is roadless, and he will have to go in, as in the old days, by donkey and camel. The discomforts may be worth it; a geological survey of the area shows fossil-bearing sediments between 5 million and 9 million years old, laid down in a period that has so far yielded few clues about the ascent...
...Finding fossils requires both sharp eyes and a sort of anthropological sixth sense. An experienced fossil hunter, Ka-moya Kimeu, who heads one of Richard Leakey's search teams, has found scores of fragments that attest to early man's presence in East Africa. Most people would walk past these small brownish objects without seeing them...
Interpreting these finds requires even more skill. The age of a fossil can often be determined by analyzing the layer of rock or soil in which it was found and determining, often by the so-called potassium-argon method, just how old the layer is. Interpreting the messages of the fossil is usually more difficult. ; The first step in studying a fossil, ; which is often fragmented, is to separate -it from its rock or soil matrix. Next the ! fragments are assembled, a task considerably harder than putting together a jigsaw puzzle with pieces all the same color...