Richard E. Leakey died on Jan. 2, at 77 years old in Nairobi, Kenya, leaving behind an extensive paleoanthropology and conservationist career as a Stony Brook professor in the Department of Anthropology and founder of the Turkana Basin Institute.

A team of scientists led by Stony Brook paleontologist David Krause discovered a mammalian skull in a block of sandstone in Madagascar that could reshape current understanding of mammalian evolution.