Archive for July 30th, 2008
Paleoanthropologist Louise Leakey’s TEDtalk
Every year TED invites esteemed academics, thinkers, doers, entrepreneurs, etc. to give an exclusive 15-18 minute long talk about what they do and why it is important for the rest of the world. I’ve shared one of these talks with you before, Zeresenay Alemseged’s. In this year’s conference, Louise Leakey, of the Leakey family lineage of paleoanthropologists, talks about her life history and the importance of finding fossil hominids.
She emphasizes how hard it is to find fossils, her view of hominid diversity, and her accounts of when Turkana Boy was found and excavated when she was 12 years old. She also weaves in points about how our population growth needs to be moderated. If you got 15 minutes to spare, I recommend watching it to know a bit more about how fossils are found and the Leakey legacy.
