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Mary Leakey (1948)
Portrait of Mary Leakey with skull of Proconsul (photo ca. 1948).
Mary Douglas Leakey (born Mary Nicol; 1913 – 1996) was a British paleoanthropologist who was born in England and moved to East Africa with her husband, Louis Leakey. Among her notable discoveries were the first fossilised Proconsul skull, a Miocene ape found at Rusinga Island, Kenya in 1948, and the skull of the robust Australopithecine named Zinjanthropus ("nut-cracker man") found at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania in 1959.
For
much of her career she worked with her husband, Louis Leakey, at
Olduvai Gorge, where they uncovered numerous fossils of early hominins,
as well as the early stone tools now classified as the Olduwan
Industry. In
1972, after the death of Louis, Mary Leakey became director of
excavations at Olduvai. She later discovered fossilized footprints at
the Laitoli site, related to hominin fossils at least 3.75 million
years old. During her career, Leakey discovered fifteen new species of
animals, and named a new genus.
References:
Leakey, M.D. 1948. "The discovery of the skull and associated mandible of a Miocene Ape." The Archaeological News Letter 8.
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