Meave Epps received a B.S. in zoology from the University of North Wales and headed to Africa. She found work at a primate research center near Nairobi. In 1968, she received her Ph.D. from the University of North Wales. In 1969, she joined the National Museum of Kenya. In 1970, she married to the director, Richard Leakey, the second of three sons of the famous paleoanthropologists, Louis and Mary Leakey.
Political connections helped make Richard Leakey the Director of the National Museum of Kenya in 1968. Meave continues working there.
In 1972, her daughter Louise was born, followed, in 1974, by her daughter Samira.
In 1982, she was named Head of the Division of Paleontology at the National Museum. In 1989, she became coordinator of the National Museum's paleontological field research in the Turkana basin. Richard had been working in this region (formerly Lake Rudolf, and now Lake Turkana) for several years and his team had made many valuable discoveries.
In 1994, Meave's team found the remains of a new species of hominid (early man), dating back four million years. This discovery pushed back the earliest date of an upright-walking man by 500,000 years.
In 1999, a more dramatic discovery was made. The team, co-led by Meave and daughter Louise, found a skull and partial jaw, dating back three and one half million year. The skull is hominid, with small teeth and a flat face. The newly found hominid dates to the same time period as the Australopithecus afarensis, the "Lucy" skeleton found in Ethiopia in 1974, which has small teeth and a protruding face. This new hominid indicates that early man did not descend in a direct line from Australopithecus afarensis. This new hominid is a second "trunk" in the family tree of man. Meave and Louise Leakey's team had discovered a new genus of hominid, which they named Kenyanthropus platyops. This study was sponsored by the National Geographic Society and the Leakey Foundation.
Many paleoanthropologists concede the possibility that man's evolutionary journey took many paths, not just a single path. Some early forms of man would become extinct, and other forms would survive. This is the pattern of evolution followed by other life forms. The 1999 Turkana discovery supports this concept of a "bush shape" rather than a "tree shape" in the evolution of modern man.
According to Meave Leakey, the mystery of the ancestry of man has not yet been solved. "There was only one candidate, and now there are two. I wouldn't say that this is necessarily a better candidate or the only other candidate. I personally believe we'll find more."
See http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v410/n6827.full.410433a0_fs.html for the complete article that appeared in Nature, March 2001.
Go To Page: 1 2
