Famous scientist Richard Leakey has warned that scientific research will be hit hard by the worldwide credit crisis, as financial donations dry up.

He told AP that research will suffer as companies and philanthropists cut back on donations and falling interest rates hit endowment income.

"With the investment portfolios being hit as hard as they've been hit in the last few weeks, particularly the last few days, I would have thought there would be a very dramatic reduction in available funds for research in all sorts of countries," said Leakey. "Unless they bring it under control, I think it's going to spread. I think it's extremely worrying for science."

As organisations start planning their budgets for 2009, he said, research funding will be "hugely hit", he said.

Leakey is best-known for his fossil discoveries in Africa, particularly the finding of the most complete skeleton of a prehistoric human in Kenya in 1984.

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AP