Louis Leakey. Photograph of the anthropologist Louis Leakey (1903-1972) with some of the fossil hominid bones he discovered. At lower left is the Kanam jaw fragment, and around the photograph are skull fragments from Kanjera. Both these sites are in Kenya. The bone fragments were found in 1932, and Leakey claimed they were from the oldest ancestors of modern humans. Their age is still disputed, however. Leakey was born in Kenya to English parents, but spent most of his life in Africa. He is most famous for his discoveries in the Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, which led to the classification of the human ancestor Homo habilis.