British Charles Robert Darwin was christened "The Father of Evolution" for his onerous contribution to efforts to find the beginning of mankind, but his theory that Africa was the cradle of mankind went unsupported for decades.

Twenty-one years after Darwin’s death, Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey, another man of great zeal and spirit, would be born to complete the task.

Leakey convinced other scientists that Africa was the key location to search for evidence of human origins at a time when Asia attracted major expeditionists.

After completing his studies in archaeology and anthropology in Cambridge in 1926, Leakey began leading expeditions to Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. In 1948, he and his wife-cum-professional colleague, Mary, reported finding Proconsul africanus, a 20-million-year-old skull, considered valuable as a model for the early man.

The Leakeys would shatter the myth that humans originated in Asia with Mary’s 1959 discovery of Zinjanthropus Boisei, the hominid fossil, later renamed Australopithecus Boisei, dated 1.75 million years ago.

A year into Kenya’s independence, the Leakeys unearthed a large-brained hominid, Homo habilis, believed to be the first true tool-maker.

Louis’ most important legacy is the century-old dynasty he built. Not only was his widow an experienced palaeontologist, but his son Richard Erskin Leakey, born in 1944, also embraced his parents’ fossil-hunting passion.

The same year Louis succumbed to a heart attack, his granddaughter, Louise, was born to replace him. The daughter of Richard and Meave Leakey, Louise has led annual expeditions to the Turkana Basin alongside her mother. One of those excursions resulted in the 1999 discovery of a 3.5 million-year-old skull and a partial jaw, believed to belong to a new branch of early hominids, named Kenyanthropus platyops.

Louise’s Phd dissertation at the University of London focused on the influence of climate on faunal evolution at West Turkana between 3.3 and 1.6 million years ago. She has been keen on constructing a research station at Koobi Fora, East Turkana, which would facilitate the study of new specimens.

Dr Richard Leakey, who made his first fossil find at the age of six, became the family flag-bearer after the death of his mother in 1996 at the age of 83. His first major international fossil-hunting expedition to Ethiopia’s Lower Omo Valley was in 1967. His subsequent excavation missions supported by his team of palaeoanthrologists, known as "The Hominid Gang", found more than 200 fossils. His most famous find was the "Turkana Boy" in 1984. A Homo erectus about 1.6 million years old, "Turkana Boy" is one of the most complete skeletons ever found.


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