Richard Leakey

Richard Leakey (1944-2022) was a Kenyan paleoanthropologist and conservationist who made major contributions to understanding human origins. He led fossil excavations at sites including Koobi Fora and Lake Turkana, where his team discovered significant early hominid specimens, among them the skeleton known as Turkana Boy. He also served as chairman of the Kenya Wildlife Service, where he built armed anti-poaching units to combat elephant poaching, and he later founded the conservation organization WildlifeDirect.