Paleoanthropologist quotes

Explore the evolution of our ancestors with insightful quotes from renowned Paleoanthropologists. Uncover the secrets of humanity's past.

We are concerned that, in a few years time, this place of discovery, with its wealth of human fossils, the like of which can be found nowhere else in the world, could be completely destroyed.

- Richard Leakey

This was the most important discovery I had ever made in my life. It was a discovery which has irrevocably changed my whole life's direction. It immediately elevated me to the status of one of the world's leading anthropologists.

- Donald Johanson

I realized immediately that this was a terribly important discovery, but I didn't realize how important it would be until we had spent a lot of time in the laboratory studying it.

- Donald Johanson

Whether or not all this came to pass in an East African ditch, I wouldn't like to say. Perhaps it happened in North Africa or further west, but Africa was definitely the place.

- Richard Leakey

I think that many of my ideas are correct, but I'll bet you, before my death other discoveries will be made that will prompt me to alter various ideas I have about human evolution.

- Donald Johanson

Lucy brought with her an image of our human ancestors that you don't get when you find a jaw or an arm bone or a leg bone. Here was 40 percent of a single skeleton.

- Donald Johanson

We set up the promised clinic for the sick and wounded Masai.

- Louis Leakey

A number of scientists with greatly different backgrounds can come up with completely different assessments. The discussions or controversies are endless. Once a year, we try to bring the most important discoverers together to exchange their experiences and knowledge.

- Richard Leakey

Sometime during the many millions of years that have elapsed since mammalian faunas came into existence, some sort of island crossed from West Africa to South America.

- Louis Leakey

I was aware of it, but I grew up in a very a-religious family. My mother never went to church, she never had any religious training or background. It was never a part of our social interaction.

- Donald Johanson

Sadly, I am not able to take part in the fieldwork myself so much anymore, as both of my legs were amputated following an airplane crash twelve years ago.

- Richard Leakey

We think that groups of between 30 and 40 early men would have settled in an area measuring a hundred square kilometers.

- Richard Leakey

When my father arrived in Kenya, he had found the Kikuyu way of life similar to that of the British at the time the Romans invaded England 2,000 years ago.

- Louis Leakey

I saw what looked like another fallen tree in front of me and put my foot on it to cross over. At that moment it reared up in front of me-the biggest python I had ever seen!

- Louis Leakey

I felt that in time simple stone tools would be found in early Pleistocene in England.

- Louis Leakey

The author knows just what he wants to illustrate and how he would like it to be done.

- Louis Leakey

I put a bullet into the back of the crocodile's neck just behind the head, thus killing it. If a crocodile is hit in any other part of its anatomy it disappears into the water and is irrecoverable.

- Louis Leakey

To save an animal's life in order that it may suffer indefinitely is something I would never condone.

- Louis Leakey

The elephants were being slaughtered in masses. Some were even killed in the vicinity of big tourist hotels.

- Richard Leakey

At Olduvai, for 20 years, Mary and I had investigated and made a general survey of the overall geology.

- Louis Leakey