Two daughters, Samira and Louise. Louise co-led the most recent expeditions to Kenya's Lake Turkana.

"We are basically apes; it's just we walk on two legs and have got a fancy head." " data-pin-do="buttonBookmark">

MEAVE G. LEAKEY: IN SEARCH OF OUR ANCESTORS

• Born in London in 1942, attended a convent and then a boarding school that didn't teach science. "In those days they didn't really think that girls needed to know anything other than literature and the arts."
• Two daughters, Samira and Louise. Louise co-led the most recent expeditions to Kenya's Lake Turkana.
• "We are basically apes; it's just we walk on two legs and have got a fancy head."

Image: KAREN RETIEF

NAIROBI, KENYA--When Meave Leakey first saw the 3.5-million-year-old human skull, she couldn't help feeling pessimistic. Grass and tree roots had invaded the specimen, and what little of it peeked out through the rocky matrix was riddled with tiny cracks. "It really was a horrible mess," she recalls, an English accent coloring her quiet voice. The veteran paleoanthropologist turns her gray-green gaze from me to the fossil cast sitting on her desk. "I never thought we'd get anything looking as good as this out of it."

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