Word: leakeys
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Back in Nairobi, young Leakey began rebuilding his neglected safari business and married Margaret Cropper, a young researcher who had been his mother's assistant at Olduvai. But he could not stay away from anthropology. In 1967 he joined an expedition organized by his father to the Omo Valley in Ethiopia. Well before it was over he knew he was ready to strike out on his own. Says Leakey: "I already knew how to organize an expedition and how to find fossils. I wanted to have my own show...
...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...
...Louis Leakey did not take kindly to the acclaim that began pouring down on Richard. For years Louis had dominated African anthropology, at least in part by intimidating his rivals. But the elder Leakey's rugged existence was beginning to exact its toll. Never one to take care of himself, he had been suffering for years from the cumulative effects of tropical diseases, concussions, bee stings and snakebites. He had also seen his son assume the directorship of the National Museums of Kenya. Now the conflict between the two became so intense that it threatened to split the family. Mary...
...feud had ended in 1972 when the elder Leakey flew to Koobi Fora to spend an exciting evening with his son, examining fossils late into the night by the harsh light of a gas lantern. That night Louis predicted that Richard would find evidence of three hominid species at Turkana. A few weeks later, he died, unaware that events would prove him right. Says Richard: "I think his sheer dogged persistence?and his follow-through on ideas to the point where they were proved either right or wrong?was his greatest gift. In many ways, his greatest achievement...
Richard does not deny it. Still director of the National Museums of Kenya, he is also a research associate of the recently created International Louis Leakey Memorial Institute...