Six Decades – The Search for Fossils at Lake Turkana

Lecture kicks off Richard Leakey Memorial Conference

Louise Leakey, research professor in the Department of Anthropology in Stony Brook University’s College of Arts and Sciences, will deliver the lecture, “Six Decades – The Search for Fossils at Lake Turkana,” on Monday, June 5, at 5 pm in the Staller Center Recital Hall.

Leakey is chair of the international advisory board of the Turkana Basin Institute (TBI) and directs the Koobi Fora Research Project, which explores the fossil-rich deposits at Lake Turkana in Kenya from the last 4 million years. The lecture will provide an overview of the project’s discoveries and expeditions.

This event is free and open to the public. Space is limited and online registration is required. The deadline to register is Friday, May 26.

Leakey, the daughter of renowned paleoanthropologists Meave and Richard Leakey and a fourth-generation Kenyan, has upheld her family legacy through her research in the Turkana Basin with TBI, a major center for human origins research for which Stony Brook University serves as the academic base. The Leakey family, dubbed “the first family of paleoanthropology,” is responsible for groundbreaking discoveries of fossil bone fragments, footprints and stone tools that contribute much of what we know about our prehistoric ancestors.

The lecture is part of the week-long Richard Leakey Memorial Conference entitled “AFRICA: The Human Cradle,” held June 5-9 on behalf of the Turkana Basin Institute and Stony Brook University, and in partnership with the National Geographic Society. The international conference will be held at Stony Brook University’s Charles B. Wang Center and will celebrate the immeasurable, life-long contributions by Richard Leakey to furthering our appreciation of Africa’s centrality in the narrative of human evolution.