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Biography
Biography
Mary Douglas Nicol was born on February 6th, 1913 (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica). Born in London, she had an early interest in drawing and illustrations, which led her to her husband, Louis Leakey. Leakey was an anthropologist and archaeologist that asked Mary to illustrate one of his publications. The two married in 1936 and became a well-known team in anthropology. They moved to Africa to begin excavation on the Olduvai Gorge in modern-day Tanzania.
Career
Career
Mary's first important discovery was a partial skull, teeth, and upper and lower jars of Proconsul africanus found in 1948 (Clark 2001: 603). From the Miocene era, the species was believed to be an ancestor of humans and apes. Another one of Mary's prominent finds was Zinjanthropus boisiei, now known as Australopithecus boisei (The Leakey Family). The hominid skull that Mary reconstructed was determined to be 1.75 million years old, altering the proposed timeline of human evolution. In the 1960s, Mary discovered the remains of a hominid that was believed to have used hand tools, unlike most species before it (Leakey Family Discovers Human Ancestors). The hominid was named Homo habilis and dated to roughly 2 million years ago. These hypotheses were reinforced when Louis and Mary's son Richard more Homo habilis remains in 1972.
Legacy
Legacy
Mary continued to work in paleoanthropology until she passed away in 1996. The Leakey Foundation is working to expand scientific knowledge and research by supporting scientists through grants and using educational programs to spread the results of scientific findings of human ancestry (The Leakey Foundation).
More Information
More Information
Learn more about Mary at the Turkana Basin Institute page
Learn more about The Leakey Foundation at their website
Read some of Mary Leakey's work at the following pages:
http://pascal-francis.inist.fr/vibad/index.php?action=getRecordDetail&idt=PASCALGEODEBRGM7920253907
https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/62755/262460a0.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
"Mary Leakey" https://youtu.be/XBtpKYFmGR4
"Animated Life-Mary Leakey" https://youtu.be/IEZh-gZgvrY
Works Cited
Works Cited
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2019. "Mary Douglas Leakey," Encyclopaedia Britannica, inc. Retrieved September 2019. (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mary-Douglas-Leakey)
Clark, J. D. 2001. Mary Douglas Leakey, The British Academy, p 594-614.
"The Leakey Family." The Leakey Foundation. Retrieved September 2019. (https://leakeyfoundation.org/about/the-leakey-family/)
"Leakey family discovers human ancestors." PBS People and Discoveries. Retrieved September 2019 (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/do59le.html)
The Leakey Foundation. Retrieved September 2019 (https://leakeyfoundation.org/)
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