A rhino horn is to be burned at the zoo in Dvur Kralove, Czech Republic. Leakey was known for his fossil- finding and work in his native country.
David Josek.
Richard Leakey, the world-famous paleoanthropologist-turned-conservationist, has died at 77.
The death of a native of the country was announced by the president.
There was no cause of death given.
Leakey's parents, Louis and Mary, made significant contributions to the understanding of human evolution through key fossil finds of early hominids, and Leakey made important discoveries of his own in the field.
He was the host of The Making of Mankind on the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1981. By the late 1980s, he had shifted his focus to take on the people who were trying to kill the country's elephants and rhinos. He brought attention to the trade in ivory.
He crashed his small plane in 1993 because of a mechanical problem. He lost his legs because of his injuries. He suspected sabotage by his political opponents.
He received his first transplant in 1979 and his brother was the donor. He was the recipient of a transplant decades later.
He was the head of the civil service in the '90s and formed a new political party after entering politics.
The Leakey Foundation shared the news of Leakey's passing on their account. He was a visionary who made great contributions to human origins and wildlife.
WildlifeDirect said on its website that Leakey "stood for integrity, hard work and excellence in all areas", and that he worked in paleontology, civil service, politics and wildlife conservativism.
He was a mentor to dozens of Africans in diverse fields and had played a key role in shaping the world's view on Africa's place in the human evolution story.
In 2011, Leakey spoke to NPR about some of his important fossil finds.
He said that for the first six weeks, they were finding things that had never been seen before by modern humans. We were the first to see them and we realized that we had things in our hands that would answer questions that people have been asking for years.
National Geographic described Leakey as a "swashbuckling, pugnacious real-life Indiana Jones," who "managed to cheat death many times" before he died.
The chairman of the Turkana Basin Institute at the time of his death was Leakey.
This story was originally published in the Morning Edition live blog.
