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Richard Leakey Biography

Richard Erskine Frere Leakey FRS (born 19 December 1944) is a Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician. He is second of the three sons of the archaeologists Louis Leakey and Mary Leakey. Leakey has held a number of official positions in Kenya, mostly in institutions of archaeology and wildlife conservation. He has been Director of the National Museum of Kenya and head of the Kenyan Wildlife Service, and he founded the NGO WildlifeDirect.

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Richard Leakey Quotes

Paleoanthropology is not a science that ends with the discovery of a bone. One has to have the original to work with. It is a life-long task.

Discovery, Long, Science, Tasks, Work

Climate change: We have never faced a more critical time on our planet

Climate, Critical, Planet, Planets, Time

Scientific innovations continually provide us with new means of analyzing the finds.

Analyzing, Finds, Innovation, Innovations, Mean

I have been raised to believe in freedom of thought and speech. If a minority wishes to accept that position it's their right. What I fear is that this minority may seem to be larger than it truly is. What is strange is that there are still people who believe the world is not a globe.

Accept, Believe, People, Raised, Strange, Wish

The problem is that during the 1980s, a decade of heavy poaching, the elephants retreated to safer areas. And now people have moved into the corridors once used by the elephants.

1980S, Elephants, People, Poaching, Problem, Retreated

Culture represents a novelty in the world of nature, and it could have added an effective, unifying edge to the forces of natural selection.

Culture, Edge, Natural, Nature, Represents, World

It occurred to me that if I did not handle the crash correctly, there would be no survivors.

Aviation, Correctly, Occurred, Survivor, Survivors, Would Be

To investigate the history of man's development, the most important finds are, of course, hominid fossils.

Course, Fossils, History, Important, Men

Humans become human through intense learning not just of survival skills but of customs and social mores, kinship and social laws-that is, culture.

Culture, Humans, Law, Learning, Skills, Survival

For fossils to thrive, certain favorable circumstances are required. First of all, of course, remnants of life have to be there. These then need to be washed over with water as soon as possible, so that the bones are covered with a layer of sediment.

Bones, Layer, Layers, Life, Needs, Water

The greatest problem we face is the growing number of people living in poverty. The related sense of hopelessness has to be impacting on every part of environmental management.

Environmental, Hopelessness, Impacting, Numbers, People, Poverty

The problem of the apes is not a shortage of money, it is a shortage of strategy. Let us devote our minds. . . the one thing we have more of than other apes. . . and let's secure their future.

Apes, Let, Mind, Problem, Secure, Shortage

In the area of species protection, we should concern ourselves with what is right as opposed to what might be easier, or popular in the short term.

Easier, Might, Opposed, Protection, Right, Species

Natural selection operates according to immediate cirumstances and not toward a long-term goal. Homo sapiens did eventually evolve as a descendant of the first humans, but there was nothing inevitable about it.

Eventually, Firsts, Goal, Long, Nothing

Ritual disposal of the dead speaks clearly of an awareness of death, and thus an awareness of self.

Awareness, Clearly, Death, Self, Speak

Sadly, I am not able to take part in the fieldwork myself so much anymore, as both of my legs were amputated following an airplane crash twelve years ago.

Airplane, Fieldwork, Take, Twelve, Years

Echoing the criticism made of his father's habilis skulls, he added that Lucy's skull was so incomplete that most of it was 'imagination made of plaster of Paris', thus making it impossible to draw any firm conclusion about what species she belonged to.

Father, Imagination, Impossible, Paris, Skulls, Species

It seems inconceivable that a species of human could possess fully modern language and not be fully modern in all other ways, too. For this reason, the evolution of language is widely judged to be the culminating event in the emergence of humanity as we know it today.

Emergence, Events, Humanity, Possess, Today, Widely

My father used to say that, through culture, humans effectively domesticated themselves.

Culture, Evolution, Father, Say, Used

As every parent knows, children go through an adolescent growth spurt, during which they put on inches at an alarming rate. Humans are unique in this respect: most mammalian species, including apes, progress almost directly from infancy to adulthood.

Adolescent, Alarming, Children, Mammalian, Parent, Unique

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