Biography
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Meave Leakey obtained her B.S. and Ph.D. from the University of North Wales. First interested in following a career in marine zoology, Meave initially undertook a joint-honors in Zoology and Marine Zoology. However, her career would soon take another path. In 1965, while studying for her Ph.D., she took a position at the Tigoni Primate Research Centre, a small facility under the auspices of Louis Leakey and located just outside of Nairobi. In 1968, she finished her Ph.D. and a year later was invited by Richard Leakey to join his field expedition investigating the newly discovered palaeontological site at Koobi Fora on the eastern shore of Kenya’s Lake Turkana. This would mark the beginning of her long-term involvement with the highly successful Turkana Basin Koobi Fora Research Project, which she now heads.
In 1970, Meave and Richard Leakey were married. They have two children: Louise, born in 1972, and Samira, born in 1974. In addition to her field work at Turkana, Meave’s research has focused on the evolution of East African fossil mammals and mammalian faunas as documented in the Turkana Basin. Her special interests include monkeys, apes and hominids. The richly fossiliferous Turkana Basin sites cover a time interval dating from 27 Ma until the recent past.
In 1989, Richard Leakey left his job as Director of the National Museum to take over management of Kenya’s wildlife, and Meave became the coordinator of the palaeontological field research in the Turkana Basin. She initially focused her field research at Turkana on finding evidence of the very earliest human ancestors, concentrating on sites between eight and four million-years-old. Currently the field project, which is co-directed by Meave and her daughter Louise, is searching for clues about the origins of our own genus Homo and the emergence of Homo erectus, the first human ancestor to move out of Africa.
In 1994, remains of some of the earliest hominids known were discovered at Kanapoi, a 4.1 Ma site to the south west of the present lake. Not only do these finds represent a new species — Australopithecus anamensis, (a likely ancestor to Australopithecus afarensis, the earliest hominid species previously recognized), but these finds also provide the earliest secure evidence of bipedality.
In 1999, Dr. Leakey’s research team found a 3.5 million-year-old skull and partial jaw said to belong to a new branch of our early human family. Dr. Leakey named the new genus Kenyanthropus platyops, or flat-faced man of Kenya. This amazing discovery, announced in the journal Nature, has profound implications in understanding the origins of mankind. In its front page story on March 22, 2001, The New York Times wrote that the discovery “threatens to overturn the prevailing view that a single line of descent stretched through the early stages of human ancestry.”
Meave has worked at the National Museums of Kenya since 1969 and was head of the division of paleontology from 1982 to 2001. She now continues her research as a Research Affiliate of the National Museums. Meave is also a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence in recognition of the 50-year relationship between “the National Geographic Society and the Leakey family dynasty of pioneering fossil hunters.” In addition to her work in Kenya, she is currently a Research Professor at Stony Brook University. 
Zoologist