Mary leakey finding the zinjanthropus
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The Leakey Family
Louis and Mary Leakey were monumental figures in the field of paleoanthropology and their groundbreaking discoveries helped shape our understanding of human origins. Now, the Leakey family is synonymous with the study of human evolution, with three generations making important contributions to science.
Louis Leakey
Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey (1903-1972) was a Kenyan-born paleoanthropologist who became one of the most iconic scientists of the twentieth century. In addition to his many fossil and stone tool discoveries, Louis Leakey was a passionate naturalist, a prolific writer, and a gifted showman with a talent for publicizing scientific discoveries to a broad public audience.
Leakey was born on August 7, 1903, at Kabete Mission near Nairobi, Kenya. His parents, Harry and Mary (Bazett) Leakey, were English missionaries to the Kikuyu tribe in the highlands west of Nairobi overlooking the Rift Valley. He spent the first sixteen years of his life in Kenya and grew up among the Kikuyu people. He spoke Kikuyu as fluently as English and developed a deep connection with the cultures and landscapes of the region. He also developed a keen interest in natural history, wildlife, and archaeology. This unique upbringing played a crucial role in shaping his wide
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Guest Post | Today in History
By Carol Broderick
On July 17, 1959, Mary Leakey left her camp and went out to search the layers of sediment in Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, as she and her husband Louis Leakey had done for almost 30 years. Their primary goal was to find fossils of our human relatives (hominins), and as hot, dusty, backbreaking, painstakingly slow and what many friends and fellow scientists might call impossible as that goal seemed, they were determined to reach it.
Louis was home with a fever that day so Mary continued their search with the company of her two Dalmatians when suddenly she saw two large teeth protruding from the hillside. She stopped, stunned, knowing immediately they were from one of our ancient relatives. She ran back to camp to tell Louis, who was as excited as Mary. His enthusiasm may have been a bit dampened as he looked at the enormous molars and realized that this was probably not a direct ancestor of ours, but any diminished excitement quickly disappeared as he recognized what Mary had found: a hominin and probably a distant relative of our own species, Homo sapiens – a “priceless discovery,” and what would become at the time “the remains of the earliest man ever found.” 1
The most exhausting and difficult of the tasks was y
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Mary Leakey: Unearthing History
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