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WILDLIFE PROTECTOR

Famed Conservationist Richard Leakey Dead at 77

The Kenyan-born son of two renowned paleontologists discovered the 1.6 million-year-old skeleton known as Turkana Boy.

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Yasuyoshi China/AFP via Getty

Famed paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey, the son the famed fossil-hunters Louis and Mary Leakey, has died at age 77. No cause of death was given for Leakey, who was born in Kenya but had also lived and worked in the U.S. Leakey, who had no academic training as an archaeologist, is best known for the 1984 discovery of a 1.6 million-year-old homo erectus skeleton that was dubbed Turkana Boy. He resume also included stints as a politician and an anti-poaching conservationist—the latter of which he blamed for a suspicious 1993 plane crash that left him with no legs.

Read it at Associated Press

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