Lea·key  (lē'kē)  British anthropologist and archaeologist. Based on a series of fossil discoveries in Tanzania made largely by his wife, Mary Leakey (1913-1996), including early australopithecine and hominid skulls, he argued influentially that humans had evolved in Africa. Their son Richard Leakey (born 1944) has continued their research. |
Leakey, Louis Seymour Bazett
Kenyan archaeologist and anthropologist whose fossil discoveries in East Africa proved that human beings were far older than had previously been believed and that human evolution was centred in Africa, rather than in Asia, as earlier discoveries had suggested. Leakey was also noted for his controversial interpretations of these archaeological finds.
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