Nairobi NM – WSJ on significance & threats

Michael M. Phillips, A Museum Overflowing With Prehistoric Treasures Races to Save Itself, The Wall Street Journal, October 2024

The Nairobi National Museum is home to unusual specimens dating back millions of years. Scientists worry the collection won’t last.

Photographs by Kang-Chun Cheng for WSJ / Video production by Alexander Hotz

Photograph by Kang-Chun Cheng for WSJ .

Louise Leakey is paleo royalty, descendant of some of the world’s most famous fossil-hunters. Now, walking through the backrooms of the Nairobi National Museum, surrounded by million-year-old specimens her family collected, in laboratories her father built, next to an auditorium with her grandfather’s statue outside, Leakey can picture Kenya’s—and her family’s—legacy falling to pieces.

The museum’s open shelves and the aisles between them are crammed with tens of thousands—maybe hundreds of thousands—of ancient specimens, stored loose in plastic bags, perched precariously on wooden tables, sinking into decaying, decades-old foam that leaves blue-green stains on fossilized bone. Loosely attached paper labels that identify.

Read/view more