Richard Erskine Frere Leakey was a Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist and politician. Leakey held a number of official positions in Kenya, mostly in institutions of archaeology and wildlife conservation. He was Director of the National Museum of Kenya, founded the NGO WildlifeDirect, and was the chairman of the Kenya Wildlife Service.
Paleoanthropology or paleo-anthropology is a branch of paleontology and anthropology which seeks to understand the early development of anatomically modern humans, a process known as hominization, through the reconstruction of evolutionary kinship lines within the family Hominidae, working from biological evidence and cultural evidence.
Turkana Boy, also called Nariokotome Boy, is the name given to fossil KNM-WT 15000, a nearly complete skeleton of a Homo ergaster youth who lived 1.5 to 1.6 million years ago. This specimen is the most complete early hominin skeleton ever found. It was discovered in 1984 by Kamoya Kimeu on the bank of the Nariokotome River near Lake Turkana in Kenya.
Homo rhodesiensis is the species name proposed by Arthur Smith Woodward (1921) to classify Kabwe 1, a Middle Stone Age fossil recovered from Broken Hill mine in Kabwe, Northern Rhodesia. In 2020, the skull was dated to 324,000 to 274,000 years ago. Other similar older specimens also exist.
Australopithecus anamensis is a hominin species that lived approximately between 4.2 and 3.8 million years ago and is the oldest known Australopithecus species, living during the Plio-Pleistocene era.
Paranthropus aethiopicus is an extinct species of robust australopithecine from the Late Pliocene to Early Pleistocene of East Africa about 2.7–2.3 million years ago. However, it is much debated whether or not Paranthropus is an invalid grouping and is synonymous with Australopithecus, so the species is also often classified as Australopithecus aethiopicus. Whatever the case, it is considered to have been the ancestor of the much more robust P. boisei. It is debated if P. aethiopicus should be subsumed under P. boisei, and the terms P. boisei sensu lato and P. boisei sensu stricto can be used to respectively include and exclude P. aethiopicus from P. boisei.
Meave G. Leakey is a British palaeoanthropologist. She works at Stony Brook University and is co-ordinator of Plio-Pleistocene research at the Turkana Basin Institute. She studies early hominid evolution and has done extensive field research in the Turkana Basin. She has Doctor of Philosophy and Doctor of Science degrees.
Koobi Fora refers primarily to a region around Koobi Fora Ridge, located on the eastern shore of Lake Turkana in the territory of the nomadic Gabbra people. According to the National Museums of Kenya, the name comes from the Gabbra language:
In the language of the Gabbra people who live near the site, the term Koobi Fora means a place of the commiphora and the source of myrrh...
The Turkwel River is a river flowing from Mount Elgon on the border of Kenya and Uganda to Lake Turkana. The river is called the Suam River from its source to the border at Turkana County of Kenya. The name Turkwel is derived from the Turkana name for the river, Tir-kol, which means a river that "withstands the wilderness". The Turkwel begins on the lush green slopes of Mount Elgon and the Cherangani Hills, then traverses the Southern Turkana Plains, crosses the Loturerei Desert near Lodwar and empties into the world's largest desert lake, Lake Turkana. The river's flow is seasonally varied, and it is subject to flash floods in the rainy season.
KNM ER 1813 is a skull of the species Homo habilis. It was discovered in Koobi Fora, Kenya by Kamoya Kimeu in 1973, and is estimated to be 1.9 million years old.
KNM ER 1805 is the catalog number given to several pieces of a fossilized skull of the species Homo habilis. It was discovered in Koobi Fora, Kenya in 1974. The designation indicates specimen 1805, collected from the east shore of Lake Rudolf for the Kenya National Museums.
KNM ER 3733 is a fossilized hominid cranium of the extinct hominid Homo ergaster, alternatively referred to as African Homo erectus. It was discovered in 1975 in Koobi Fora, Kenya, right next to Lake Turkana, in a survey led by Richard Leakey, by a field worker called Bernard Ngeneo.
KNM ER 992 is a 1.5 million years old fossilized lower jaw discovered by Richard Leakey in 1971 at Lake Turkana, Kenya. The mandible was considered by C. Groves and V. Mazak to be the holotype specimen for Homo ergaster.
The Florisbad Skull is an important human fossil of the early Middle Stone Age, representing either late Homo heidelbergensis or early Homo sapiens. It was discovered in 1932 by T. F. Dreyer at the Florisbad site, Free State Province, South Africa.
Eliye Springs Airport is an airport in the Turkana County, Kenya.
The greater Turkana Basin in East Africa determines a large endorheic basin, a drainage basin with no outflow centered around the north-southwards directed Gregory Rift system in Kenya and southern Ethiopia. The deepest point of the basin is the endorheic Lake Turkana, a brackish soda lake with a very high ecological productivity in the Gregory Rift.
KNM ER 3883 is the catalogue number of a fossilized skull of the species Homo ergaster. The fossil was discovered by Richard Leakey in 1976 in Koobi Fora, east of Lake Turkana, Kenya.
The Ndutu skull is the partial cranium of a hominin that has been assigned variously to late Homo erectusHomo rhodesiensis, and early Homo sapiens, from the Middle Pleistocene, found at Lake Ndutu in northern Tanzania.
Emma Mbua is a Kenyan Paleoanthropologist and a curator, who is the first East African woman to work as a paleoanthropologist.
