Born in Kenya in 1944, Richard Leakey was the second son of renowned palaeoanthropologists, Louis and Mary Leakey. Richard described his family as relatively poor, with school holidays spent in the desolate Olduvai region of Tanzania where his parents worked.
“We didn’t have toys, so as children we learned to pick up bits of bone and see if we could identify what they were,” said Leakey. “We didn’t have a refrigerator until I was 12 years old.”
