Kamoya Kimeu, the son of a goat herder whose preternatural gift for spotting and identifying petrified tibias, skull fragments and other ancient human remains among the arid, rocky badlands of East Africa won him acclaim as the world's greatest fossil hunter, died on July 20 in Nairobi, Kenya
Kamoya Kimeu, the son of a goat herder whose preternatural gift for spotting and identifying petrified tibias, skull fragments and other ancient human remains among the arid, rocky badlands of East Africa won him acclaim as the world’s greatest fossil hunter, died on July 20 in Nairobi, Kenya. He did not know his exact age, but believed it to be about 84.
Don Kamoya, a grandson, said that the cause of death, in a hospital, was pneumonia and kidney failure.
Most paleontologists go years between uncovering hominid fossils, and the lucky ones might find 10 in a career. Kamoya, as he was called, who had just six years of primary school education in Kenya, claimed at least 50 over his half-century in the field.
Among them were several groundbreaking specimens, like a 130,000-year-old Homo sapiens skull, which he found in 1968 in Ethiopia’s Omo Valley. The discovery pushed back paleontologists’ estimate for the emergence of human beings by some 70,000 years.
“Kamoya is a legend,” Carol Ward, a professor of anatomy at the University of Missouri who has worked extensively in East Africa, said in a phone interview. “He is responsible for some of the most significant fossil finds that shaped our understanding of our evolutionary past.”
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