More than 50 years British born Paleoanthropologist Make it leaky The fossils of our early ancestors in Kenya have remained untouched Basin of Turkey. Her discovery has changed how we think about our origins. Instead of human development to systematically ape, suggests its function Different pre-human species living together. Leakey’s new memory, Silt of Time: Discovering the Past of My Lifetime, Co-written with his daughter Samira, It reflects on the life of science and its fragments of what we now understand Climate-based evolution of our species.
Leaky paleoantropol ologists are part of the famous family of gist. Her husband, Richard Leakey and her parents, Lewis and Mary, Known for them Discover the early hominins.
Maw, 78, a On the professor Stony Brook University, New York And Director of Field Research at NatanProfit Turkey Basin Institute, Collaboration between the Leakey family and Stony Brook.
You graduated from university in 1960 with a degree in Zoology and Marine Zoology Banger And envisioned a career as a marine biologist. How did you end up Fossil hunting in Africa?
I wrote letters to many maritime centers around the world and got the same answer: they do not have facilities for women on boats. Bored, I decided I had to try something else. At that point a boyfriend found an ad on her back page This Times For a research position at Tigo’s Primate Research Center in Kenya. I called the number and picked up Louis Leakey. Within a week I was on the plane.
I met Richard while I was running the center. I just got a PhD in zoology, studying the skeleton of a monkey. Richard contacted me to talk about how the center spends more money and we need to save. We hit him and I started to watch him a little. He asked if I wanted to come and work with him at his fossil site. This is how I reached Turkana and the remains.
You and Richard were married in 1970 and your daughters Lewis and Samira were born in 1972 and 1974.. How did you balance research and motherhood?
I didn’t want to lose the excitement of fieldwork, so both babies were taken to Turkey just a week after their birth. When we went out to work they would stay in base camp with someone to take care of them. As they got older they would occasionally come out with us.
There is a special skull that has always been one of my favorite relics, as I have happy memories of rebuilding it, playing Baby Hippo in the pond and Baby Lewis playing on my feet in the bottom in the cold water. It was a really special time.
In the late 1980’s, Richard went on to become Kenya’s prime minister Wildlife Service and you have taken the lead in the field. In 1999 Your team found an early hominin skull that was just as old as the famous one Lucy (Austral Strel op Pythius are Frances), 3.2MFound years-old fossil skeleton 1974 In Ethiopia. You called him Kenyanthropus plate ops ps: Flat face man from Kenya. How did it change our understanding of evolution?
Lucy got a huge amount. She was projected as usual This The common ancestor of human beings. I always felt that it made no sense, because if you look at another animal species there are always many species. I thought: There should be diversity [in the early hominins].
When we got this sample, it was crushed and broken, so it took a long time to make sense of it. But you could say it was something new, and different from Lucy. He lived with Lucy, but this was really his face to face. The significance had reached so far: he showed Lucy The ancestors of all subsequent hominins were not necessarily.
Your book does not include the family tree of our origin. Was it intentional?
Yes. I try and don’t want to draw any straight lines between things. There is still a lot to discover. I worry that instead of adding to our understanding the construction of the lineage may be only preliminary and in fact it may be misleading.
There are periodic attempts to deny Africa as the ‘birthplace of mankind’. How have things changed in your career? And East Africa should Or Is there a moniker in South Africa, where early Hominin fossils have also been found in caves?
Early paleontologists did not believe that humans could come from Africa. The biased insistence was that humans must have originated in Europe. The work of persuading the scientific community and the world was otherwise started by my parents-in-law and continued by my husband, me and my daughter Lewis. As I have gone through my career it has become more and more accepted. Certainly Africa is where it all started. The atmosphere and vegetation were OK. And, for me, East Africa is mostly, because if you look at where human primates are distributed today, they focus around the tropics and the equator.
How we developed our excessive brain power and our ability to walk on two legs?
Evolution changes due to habitats driven by a changing climate. Walking with a tendency to dry, towards a more open savannah, I suspect that our ancestors began to come down from the trees to the ground. They found that if they stood on two legs they could reach food – like berries and fruits on trees – better, and they could travel more.
After bipartisanship and increased efficiency, big brains came later. The brain is expensive in terms of calories. To develop a large brain, you must have a source of food. When our ancestors began to find ways to hunt and catch a lot of meat, they were able to develop into big brains.
You donated a kidney Richard, and lost both his legs in a plane crash that helped him. Do you think our ancestors formed the same social bonds??
I’m certain. We found a 1.6 year old femur [thigh bone] It was very clearly broken and blended, and that means only that person can be cared for. Otherwise, they would not have made it. The degree of social bonding should be significant.
Are you still going to the pit, and what will be your end result?
I still go to the field, but not so much. Louis and I have an amazing crew, so we don’t have to be there all the time. We are mainly working on the west side of Lake Turka, going to the 4 million year old sites we worked on decades ago. Fossils are weather all the time, so you can get a lot out of this. Finding the perfect skeleton of any early hominin is my dream. We can learn a lot from the skull alone.
Are we still evolving?
I don’t think we’re still evolving physically, because we control our environment so much. And when there is a change in the environment now – which means we can’t live in the places we live in today – it’s hard to imagine that because of that control it will affect our physical evolution. Still, our technology is evolving beautifully. Our evolution is now more technical than morphological.
• Silt of Time: Discovering the Past of My Lifetime Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (. 23.99) by Mewe Leakey. Go to GuardianBookshop.com to place an order. Delivery charges may apply
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