Word: sons
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...role. From the age of six months, he was taken on expeditions with his famous parents and learned to recognize fossils almost before he could talk. His childhood conversations were filled with the anatomical, geological and biological jargon of anthropology. His father ?a Church of England missionary's son who was raised almost entirely in the African bush?taught "bushcraft" to Richard and his brothers Jonathan and Philip by sending them out to scavenge and survive in the wild. But as Richard grew up, he became restive living in the shadow of strong-willed and often autocratic Louis Leakey...
...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 began to spend more and more time away at Olduvai, while Louis and Richard pointedly avoided each other. Says Richard: "He was a sick...
...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...
...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...
This is especially true of the family whose story forms the core of the film. There is an old man (Roberts Blossom), a senile mumbler who springs to youthful life when he is gossiping with truckers; his caretaker son (Paul Le Mat) who sets himself up as a kind of CB vigilante, policing those who abuse CB privileges; an athletic-coach brother (Bruce McGill) who hates both of them and anonymously threatens vengeance on them; a schoolteacher (Candy Clark) who has had it off with both of them, but who turns out to be the aforementioned dirty talker...