Dead Kenyan paleoanthropologist and conservationist Richard Leakey is dead

World famous Kenyan paleoanthropologist and conservationist Richard Leakey is dead. He died at the age of 77 on Sunday.

“I have received the sad news this afternoon that Dr. Richard Erskine Frere Leakey is dead,” said the President of Kenya. Uhuru Kenyatta in its statement late Sunday.

Leakey became known in the 1960s when he discovered the oldest skeleton of the nearly fully preserved homo erectus, 1.6 million years old, near Lake Turkana in northwestern Kenya.

In 1989, the then president of Kenya Daniel arap Moi asked leakey to lead nature conservation in kenya. Even then, the biggest problem was the poaching of elephants. In the same year, Leakey burned 12 tons of seized elephant tusks at the stake.

Leakey founded the Safina Party in the 1990s, which, in addition to conservation, pushed for democratic change. In 1997, Leakey was elected to parliament.

Leakey gave up politics in 2001. But he did not abandon conservation.

Read more (payment wall): Life is like a movie – paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey is all about man and elephant