Lake Turkana National Parks are listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Sibiloi National Park lies on the lake's eastern shore, while Central Island National Park and South Island National Park are in the lake. Both have crocodiles.
The Lake Turkana area is regarded by many anthropologists as the cradle of humankind because there are many hominid fossils. The skeleton of Turkana boy was found near the lake in 1984.
Marie Osmond
Olive Marie Osmond, known simply as Marie Osmond (born October 13, 1959) is an American singer, actress, and doll designer. She was born in Ogden, Utah. She is the sister of Donny Osmond. Marie was not a part of her family's singing group The Osmonds. She had some success as a solo country artist in the 1970s and 1980s. She also hosted several talk shows with her brother Donny.
Marie was born in Ogden, Utah. She is one of nine children and the only daughter. She was four years old when she first performed on television in the 1960s.
Marie has released a total of 9 albums of mostly country and pop music. Her 1973 release of Paper Roses became a number 1 hit and started her successful career. Her latest work released in 2015 is titled Music is Medicine.
She stared in 2 Broadway musicals. In 1994 she played the lead in The King and I and in 1997 she played the lead in The Sound of Music.
She was co-host of the Donny and Marie show that was very popular from 1975 until 1978. Marie acted in several made for TV movies, variety shows, situation comedy's and voiced animated characters during her career.
In 1978, she stared in the movie Goin' Coconuts.
She was part of the CBS daytime show The Talk during the 10th season.
Marie has written 3 books. In 2007 she came in third place on the 5th season of the US version of Dancing with the Stars. From 2008 through 2019 she performed with her brother, Donny, in a musical show at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Marie is the co-founder of the non-profit organization Children's Miracle Network. It was started in 1983 and the money raised promotes children's hospitals in North America.
Marie is married to Stephen Craig and lives in Las Vegas, Nevada. She also owns a home in Ogden, Utah and one in Los Angeles, California. She has 8 children. She is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Louis Leakey
Louis Leakey (L.S.B. Leakey, 7 August 1903 – 1 October 1972) was a Kenyan archaeologist, anthropologist and naturalist.
His work was important in establishing human evolutionary development in East Africa. He also played a major role in creating organizations for future research in Africa and for protecting wildlife there.
Leakey was the third of the three great anthropologists of British origin who made Africa their home: the others were Robert Broom and Raymond Dart.
He started a tradition of palaeoanthropological inquiry in Kenya. His own family carried on the 'family firm'. Several of them became well-known anthropologists and fossil hunters.
Louis took part in national events of British East Africa and then Kenya at critical times.
In biology he asserted Charles Darwin's theory of evolution unswervingly, and set about to prove Darwin's hypothesis that man arose in Africa. He was also a devout Christian.
Louis and Mary spent all the time they could at Olduvai Gorge, starting in 1951. So far they had discovered only stone tools. A more extensive excavation came in 1952. They found what Louis termed an Oldowan "slaughter-house", an ancient bog where animals had been trapped and butchered. Louis was so carried away that he worked without his hat and his hair was bleached white from the sun. They stopped in 1953.
In 1955 they excavated again with Jean Brown. She related that he preferred to be called Louis, was absent-minded, once had everyone looking for spectacles that were around his neck, wore pants with the buttons off and shoes with holes in them, charged about everywhere and once collapsed unconscious. He was completely happy.
In 1959 they decided to excavate Bed I. While Louis was sick in camp, Mary discovered the fossilized skull OH 5, which Mary called "Our Man", and became "Dear Boy" and "Zinj." The question was whether it was a previous genus discovered by Robert Broom, "Paranthropus", which Broom had taken not to be in the human line, or a different one, in it. Louis opted for Zinj, a decision opposed by Wilfrid Le Gros Clark, but one which attracted the attention of Melville Bell Grosvenor, president of the National Geographic Society. That contact resulted in an article in "National Geographic", and a hefty grant to continue work at Olduvai.
Zinj was far older than anyone had imagined. Scientists swarmed to Africa. Louis had proved Darwin right.
In 1960, unable to leave the museum except on weekends, Louis appointed Mary director of excavation at Olduvai. She brought in a staff of Kamba tribesmen, instead of Kikuyu, who, she felt, took advantage of Louis. The first, Muteva Musomba, had kept her children's ponies. He recruited Kamoya Kimeu among others. Mary set up Camp 5 under Jonathan's direction. He was 19. From then on she had her own staff and associates.
Mary picked and sieved at the site from early morning dressed in old clothes, chain smoking cigarettes, always surrounded by her Dalmatian. She and Louis communicated by radio. On weekends he drove non-stop at high speed the 357 miles between Olduvai and Nairobi. The teen-age boys, Richard and Philip, were on site during holidays and vacations.
Their home in Nairobi was a circus, figuratively speaking, when they were there. Dinner guests were frequent. Important guests stayed for weeks if they could stand it. They shared the quarters and the dinner table with the Dalmatians, hyraxes, a monkey, a civet cat, an African eagle owl, tropical fish, snakes, such as vipers, and a python.
The extended families of twenty African staff lived in cinderblock huts in the yard. Mary had switched to cigars and the ashes often fell into the food. Both Louis and Mary cooked. Louis never stopped talking; his stories were endless. He literally ran through the day, making long lists of things to be done, which he never completed. He drove recklessly through the streets of Nairobi, often reading and writing as he drove.
There was another side to the Leakey family. Louis was a notorious womanizer. He was faithful neither to Frida nor to Mary. Mary tolerated this behavior well until his relationship with Rosalie Osborn, 1954/55, threatened to break up her marriage.
The two fought constantly, upsetting the boys. After Richard nearly died in a fall from a horse, Louis broke with Rosalie for the sake of the boys.
Jonathan achieved some brief fame before he quit palaeoanthropology altogether. He started his own site, "Jonny's site" in the Leakey lingo, FLK-NN. There he discovered two skull fragments without the Australopithecine sagittal crest, which Mary connected with Broom's and Robinson's Telanthropus. The problem was its contemporaneity with Zinj. Mailed photographs, Le Gros Clark retorted casually "Shades of Piltdown". Louis cabled him immediately and had some strong words at this suggestion of his incompetence. Clark apologized.
In 1960 Louis, his son Philip and Ray Pickering discovered a fossil he termed "Chellean Man", as it was in context with Oldowan tools, the first such find. After reconstruction Louis and Mary called it "Pinhead." It was subsequently included with "Homo erectus" and was in fact contemporaneous with "Paranthropus", which on that account cannot have been in the human line. For many years Louis believed erectus was the user of the tools and "Australopithecus" was not.
In 1961 Louis got a salary as well as a grant from National Geographic and turned over the acting directorship of Coryndon to a subordinate. He created the Centre for Prehistory and Paleontology on the same grounds, moved his collections to it, and appointed himself director. This was his new operations center.