Ancestral Passions: The Leakey Family and the Quest for Humankind's Beginnings

by VirginiaMorell (Author)

• New

  Illustrated
  1999

  $30.06

  No other family in history has dominated a scientific field as the Leakey family has. Louis, Mary, and Richard Leakey have made key fossil discoveries that have shaped and reshaped our understanding of human origins. As a member of the tiny minority of scientists who believed that humankind originated in Africa millions of years ago, Louis Leakey helped to lay the theoretical groundwork for the science of paleoanthropology. In Ancestral Passions, Virginia Morell has written the first full biography of the Leakeys, a vivid portrait of a family whose contributions to science remain unmatched.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1996

  $3.25

  This is a biography of the first family of anthropology - Louis, Mary and Richard Leakey, whose discoveries have laid the foundations for much of our knowledge about the origins of man. The Leakeys have dominated their science. Not only did each of them make key fossil discoveries, but Louis (who argued that man did not originate on the Eurasian continent tens of thousands of years ago, but was more likely to have evolved in Africa millions of years ago) helped to establish the theoretical groundwork for the science of paleonanthropology. The biography explores the Leakeys many significant finds, as they exposed our ancestry and articulated our relationship to the other primates, especially the early hominids. It also exposes the rivals and jealousies within the family and in relation to other scientists.