Today marks 100 years since the birth of Louis Leakey, the patriarch of the first family of human fossils. NPR's Christopher Joyce reports for National Geographic Radio Expeditions.

Louis Leakey was born in 1903 in Kenya, where his English parents were missionaries. He learned the Kikuyu language and customs, and while searching for birds as a young man often found ...

Louis Leakey was not the first person to ever find an ancient hominid fossil. But more than anyone else, he promoted and popularized the study of human evolution. His work spurred others to go to ...

When it came to choosing three people whom he’d send to live with the great apes, legendary paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey picked three women — very consciously, according to Jane Goodall ...

The Old Man of Olduvai Gorge Irrepressible Louis Leakey, patriarch of the fossil-hunting family, championed the search for human origins in Africa, attracting criticism and praise ...

When Louis Leakey was born in 1903, child of English missionaries in Kenya Colony, educated people had little shared idea of their common ancestry.

Paleoanthropologist Louise Leakey, the granddaughter of Mary and Louis Leakey, who first determined that early humans evolved in Africa, presented a history of her family’s research in north ...

The skull of Paranthropus boisei (“Zinj,” “Dear Boy,” “Nutcracker Man,” etc.). Louis Leakey had a problem. During the summer of 1959 he and his wife Mary recovered the skull fragments ...

Louis died in 1972. His son, Richard, continued the family legacy before his death in January 2022, aged 77. Louis Leakey Kikuyu Trump Card Leakey Family Share this article on social media . .

Louis and Mary met on a dig in England, and both worked briefly at the Olduvai Gorge before being married in England. It was Leakey's second marriage.

This short documentary remembers the paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey, who discovered footprints of human ancestors on the African savanna.