Louise Leakey
Dr. Louise Leakey, daughter of Richard and Meave Leakey, is a paleontologist, Explorers Club Fellow, and Stony Brook professor exploring human origins.
3rd Generation Kenyan
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Princess
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Fossil Hunter
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3rd Generation Kenyan • Princess • Fossil Hunter •
More about Louise
Born and raised in East Africa, Louise Leakey (officially, Princess Louise de Merode) was destined to carry on her family’s legacy—searching for human origins in the fossil-rich Turkana Basin that stretches from Kenya into southern Ethiopia. The daughter of Meave and Richard Leakey, and granddaughter of Louis and Mary Leakey, at age five, Louise became the youngest documented person to find a hominid fossil—a tooth from a 17-million-year-old primate. By age 12, Louise was driving the family’s Land Rover to pick up water for the team. At age 18, she learned how to fly a single-engine plane–a skill that would prove useful later.
While Louise was away at college in England, her father lost his legs below the knee due to complications from a plane crash. At that time, Louise returned to Africa to join her mother in running the field camp. Six years later, launching her career, the mother-daughter team discovered a 3.5-million-year-old skull believed to be a branch of very early humans.
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Louise currently directs Kenya’s paleo-anthropological expeditions of the Koobi Fora Research Project. A true conservation family, Louise is married to Prince Emmanuel de Merode, a Belgian Prince and paleontologist who directs the Virunga National Park in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, home to endangered mountain gorillas. Louise earned a PhD in Biology from University College London. In addition to field work, she also serves as a Research Professor in Anthropology at SUNY Stony Brook (the academic partner of the Turkana Basin Institute) and a Research Associate at the National Museums of Kenya.
Speaking Topics
Science
Exploration
Culture
Watch Louise in action
Presentations
Digging for Humanity’s Origins
The burning question that consumes Louise Leakey—born in Africa and heir to the famed Leakey dynasty of fossil seekers—is: “How is it that Homo Sapiens are the only surviving species out of the genus Homo; the upright ape species that have called Earth home over the past 8 million years?”
“What the fossil record does is to force us to contemplate our place on the planet. We are but one species of several hominids that inhabited Earth, and—like our distant cousins who went extinct fairly recently—our time on planet Earth is also finite.”
– Louise Leakey