Jacqueline Roumeguere- Eberhardt, 78; Scholar’s Theory Was Disputed

Jacqueline Roumeguere-Eberhardt, 78, a French anthropologist perhaps best known for her marriage to a Masai warrior and for a controversial theory that prehistoric beings still live in Africa, died March 29 of congestive heart failure in Nairobi, Kenya.

Born in South Africa, Eberhardt moved to Paris in her youth and became a French citizen in 1957 with her marriage to Pierre Roumeguere, a French diplomat.

The couple moved to Kenya in 1966 but split up, and she eventually married her longtime research assistant, Metamei Ole Kapusia, a Masai.

Fluent in the Masai language, Roumeguere-Eberhardt became an expert on the tribe and published several books on the subject. She wrote several anthropological treatises, and won a measure of notoriety in 1978 when she said a group of creatures -- with Xs on their foreheads -- were living in the Kenyan bush.

They became the basis of her 1984 book “The Unidentified Hominids of the African Forest,” which was greeted with skepticism by many researchers, including paleontologist Richard Leakey.

She later said her relationship with her Masai husband was excellent, noting that she and his other wives -- which numbered variously from five to nine -- got along well.