Mary Leakey

**Mary Douglas Leakey**, FBA (née **Nicol**, 6 February 1913 – 9 December 1996) was a British archaeologist and anthropologist. She spent much of her life working in East Africa, particularly in Tanzania and Kenya.

Leakey discovered the first fossilized _Proconsul_ skull, an extinct primate. It had a mixture of Old World monkey and ape characteristics, and its position in the evolution of the apes is still not clear. In Tanzania, Leakey also discovered the robust _Zinjanthropus_ skull at Olduvai Gorge and the Laetoli footprints.

For much of her career she worked together with her husband, Louis Leakey, in Olduvai Gorge, uncovering the tools and fossils of ancient hominins. She developed a system for classifying the stone tools found at Olduvai.

In 1960 Leakey became director of excavation at Olduvai. Eventually, she chose and trained her own staff. After the death of her husband she became a leading palaeoanthropologist, helping to establish the Leakey tradition by training her son, Richard, in the field.

## Excavations

Leakey served her apprenticeship in archaeology under Dorothy Liddell at Hembury in Devon, 19301934, for whom she also did illustrations.  In 1934 she was part of a dig at Swanscombe where she discovered the largest elephant molar known at the time in Britain. She needed help to identify its species.<sup>p47</sup>

### Olduvai

Leakey spent the years 1935 to 1959 at Olduvai Gorge in the Serengeti plains of Northern Tanzania. She found many stone tools, from primitive stone-chopping instruments to multi-purpose hand axes.  These finds came from Stone Age cultures dated as far back as 100,000 to two million years ago.

The Leakeys unearthed a _Proconsul africanus_ skull on Rusinga Island in October 1948.

In 1960, unable to leave the museum except on weekends, Louis appointed Mary director of excavation at Olduvai. She brought in a staff of Kamba tribesmen, instead of Kikuyu, who, she felt, took advantage of Louis. The first, Muteva Musomba, had kept her children's ponies. He recruited Kamoya Kimeu among others. Mary set up Camp 5 under Jonathan's direction. He was 19. From then on she had her own staff and associates.

Mary picked and sieved at the site from early morning dressed in old clothes, chain smoking cigarettes, always surrounded by her Dalmatian. She and Louis communicated by radio. On weekends he drove the 357 miles between Olduvai and Nairobi. The teen-age boys, Richard and Philip, were on site holidays and vacations.

### After Louis

After Mary's husband died, she continued her work at Olduvai and Laetoli. It was here, at the Laetoli site, that she discovered Hominin fossils that were more than 3.75 million years old.  She also discovered fifteen new species of other animals and one new genus.

From 1976 to 1981, Leakey and her staff worked to uncover the Laetoli hominid footprint trail which was left in volcanic ashes some 3.6 million years ago. Leakey spent the years that followed this discovery doing research at Olduvai and Laetoli, preparing publications, and doing the follow-up work to discoveries.

## Books by Mary Leakey

- 1950 _Excavations at Njoro River Cave_ (with Louis Leakey).
- 1971 _Olduvai Gorge: Excavations in Beds I and II, 1960-1963_.
- 1979 _Olduvai Gorge: my search for early Man_.
- 1983 _Africa's vanishing art: the rock paintings of Tanzania_.
- 1984 _Disclosing the past: an autobiography_. Garden City, New York: Doubleday.

## Other websites

- Anthropology Biography Web: Mary Leakey
- Leakey Foundation

## Infobox (scientist)

- **name**: Mary Leakey
- **image**: Mary Leakey.jpg
- **birth place**: London, England, UK
- **death place**: Nairobi, Kenya,
East Africa
- **nationality**: British
- **spouse**: Louis Leakey
- **field**: Anthropologist, Archeologist
- **known for**: Hominid fossils, Laetoli