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Culture represents a novelty in the world of nature, and it could have added an effective, unifying edge to the forces of natural selection.

Richard Leakey

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Richard Leakey
Age: 79
Born: 1944
Born: December 19
Anthropologist
Archaeologist
Autobiographer
Conservationist
Paleoanthropologist
Paleontologist
Politician
Prehistorian
Kenya's capital
Richard Erskine Frere Leakey
Nature
Represents
World
Edge
Effective
Edges
Unifying
Forces
Novelty
Natural
Force
Selection
Culture
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More quotes by Richard Leakey

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When out fossil hunting, it is very easy to forget that rather than telling you how the creatures lived, the remains you find indicate only where they became fossilized.
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Echoing the criticism made of his father's habilis skulls, he added that Lucy's skull was so incomplete that most of it was 'imagination made of plaster of Paris', thus making it impossible to draw any firm conclusion about what species she belonged to.
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To have arrived on this earth as a product of a biological accident, only to depart through human arrogance, would be the ultimate irony.
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It's the next annihilation of vast numbers of species. It is happening now, and we, the human race, are its cause
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It occurred to me that if I did not handle the crash correctly, there would be no survivors.
Richard Leakey
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Primates need good nutrition, to begin with. Not only fruits and plants, but insects as well.
Richard Leakey
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Humans become human through intense learning not just of survival skills but of customs and social mores, kinship and social laws-that is, culture.
Richard Leakey
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Climate change: We have never faced a more critical time on our planet
Richard Leakey
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The problem of the apes is not a shortage of money, it is a shortage of strategy. Let us devote our minds... the one thing we have more of than other apes... and let's secure their future.
Richard Leakey
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The language of art is powerful to those who understand it, and puzzling to those who do not. What we do know is that here was the modern human mind at work, spinning symbolism and abstraction in a way that only Homo sapiens is capable of doing.
Richard Leakey
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Along the borders to Ethiopia and Somalia, anarchy reigns, the police and military have retreated quite some distance.
Richard Leakey
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The whole story is about change. We are very lucky that the earth's history is recorded in fossilized remains. And we can see the changes. Unfortunately, there will always be gaps in our knowledge, but there is no doubt that we and everything living today has evolved.
Richard Leakey
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Paleoanthropology is not a science that ends with the discovery of a bone. One has to have the original to work with. It is a life-long task.
Richard Leakey
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We hope to find more pieces of the puzzle which will shed light on the connection between this upright, walking ape, our early ancestor, and modern man.
Richard Leakey
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The elephants were being slaughtered in masses. Some were even killed in the vicinity of big tourist hotels.
Richard Leakey
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It is virtually impossible to control Northern Kenya, which is populated chiefly by migrant nomads.
Richard Leakey
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Natural selection operates according to immediate cirumstances and not toward a long-term goal. Homo sapiens did eventually evolve as a descendant of the first humans, but there was nothing inevitable about it.
Richard Leakey
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Ritual disposal of the dead speaks clearly of an awareness of death, and thus an awareness of self.
Richard Leakey
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Sadly, I am not able to take part in the fieldwork myself so much anymore, as both of my legs were amputated following an airplane crash twelve years ago.
Richard Leakey
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The greatest problem we face is the growing number of people living in poverty. The related sense of hopelessness has to be impacting on every part of environmental management.
Richard Leakey