The celebrated Kenyan conservationist and fossil hunter Richard Leakey, whose groundbreaking discoveries helped prove that humankind evolved in Africa, has died aged 77.
The president of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta, announced Leakey’s death with “deep sorrow”.
The famed palaeoanthropologist had remained energetic into his 70s, despite bouts of skin cancer and kidney and liver disease.
Posting on Twitter, the Leakey Foundation wrote of its “deep sadness” at his death, adding: “He was a visionary whose great contributions to human origins and wildlife conservation will never be forgotten.”
Leakey was born in Nairobi on 19 December 1944 – and it was perhaps inevitable that he would become a fossil hunter given his parents were Louis and Mary Leakey, perhaps the world’s most famous discoverers of ancestral hominids.