Download The Leakeys

The Leakeys
Who they were and what
they found.
The Leakeys
Louis Leakey
Born: 1903
Where: Near Nairobi, Kenya
Education: went to school at Cambridge University,
majoring in Anthropology and graduating in
1926.
Occupation: a British anthropologist
Cont’d of Louis Leakey
Work: after graduation, he got a job as an Africa expert on an
archaeological mission to Tanzania.
- He returned to Cambridge to study anthropology and in 1928 he
married Frieda.
- He published his first book called The Stone Age Cultures of Kenya
Colony where he discovered the oldest Homo sapiens
- In 1939 became a Civilian Intelligence Officer for the Kenyan
government, and during this time, he remarried a woman named
Mary
- In the early 1960’s, a Leaky expedition to the Olduvai Gorge
uncovered human fossils.
Louis Leakey died at the age of 69 in 1972 from a heart attack. Mary
and his son, Richard, continued his work and went on to discover
more artifacts.
Mary Leakey
Name: Mary Douglas Nicol Leakey
Born: February 6, 1913
Where: London, England
Education: her mother sent her to a Catholic
convent where she was expelled.
Occupation: a British archaeologist and
anthropologist.
Cont’d of Mary Leakey
Work:
- In 1934, Mary began her first excavation at Hembury Fort in Devon
- In September of 1934, Mary performed her first excavation at Jaywick
Sands near Clacton, Essex and published her first scientific paper.
- Mary and Louis spent from 1935-1959 at Olduvai Gorge in the Seregeti
Plains of northern Tanzania.
- In October of 1947, while on Rusinga Island, Mary unearths a Proconsul
skull, which was the first skull of an ape to ever be found. There are only
three others that are known.
- In 1955, Mary and Louis were awarded the Stopes Medal from the
Geological Association for their hard work and discoveries.
- A 1.75 million year-old Australopithecus Boisei skull was uncovered in 1959.
- She discovered Homo fossils at Laetoli which were more than 3.75 million
years old, 15 new species and one new genus.
Mary Leakey died on Monday, December 9th, 1996 at the age of 83.
Austrolopithecus Boisei and Proconsul Skull
Richard Leakey ( Louis’ and Mary’s Son)
- He is the world’s best-known paleontologist
- He was credited with some of the most significant fossil discoveries
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of the 20th century.
In 1996, he married Margaret Cooper, an archaeologist who worked
with the Leakey family.
In 1968 his political sense led him to be appointed as the director of
the National Museum of Kenya.
In 1969, he and his wife Margaret had a daughter named Anna, and
they were divorced the same year.
The following year he married Meave Epps, a zoologist who
specialized in primates.
That had two daughters together; Louise in 1972 and Samira in
1974.
Cont’d of Richard Leakey
- In 1984, his team found the most impressive fossil.
- They following year supplied another major find, WT 17000, the first
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skull of the species Australopithecus aethiopicus
In 1993, a crash caused by a malfunction in the airplane he was
flying caused the loss of both his legs below the knee.
Since then he has become involved in Kenyan politics, and was the
Secretary General of the Kenyan opposition party Safina.
In December 1997, he was elected to a seat in the Kenyan
parliament.
Richard Leakey has authored over 100 scientific articles and books,
including The Sixth Extinction, Origins, Origins Reconsidered, The
Origin of Humankind, and One Life.
The Big Discovery
Olduvai Gorge in East Africa had been the site of many exciting fossil finds.
Mary and Louis Leakey had spent their lives there looking for evidence of our
origins. The search began in 1931. The first most important piece was found
in 1959, when Mary spotted part of a skull and 2 premolars stuck in the side
of the cliff.
On a summer morning, Mary was out for a walk with her two Dalmatians and
Louis had stayed in because he had influenza. She stopped at a site called
Frieda Leakey Korongo which was a gully and the discovery was made there.
They excavated more than 400 parts to the skull of an Australopithecine.
They found it to be 1.75 million years-old through the potassium-argon dating
technique.
They named it “The Nutcracker Boy” due to the huge cheek teeth. Other names
they had for it was “Zinj” and “Dear Boy”.
Pictures
Here is Mary on one of her
excavation missions.
The one on the left shows her
analyzing footprints.
Importance to Social Science Studies
• Mary brought to light the footprints of individuals walking upright with the
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footprints of other animals such as elephants and antelopes.
The morphology of the feet (short toes, close together) and the distribution
of the body weight in relation to the arch of the foot shows the signs of the
modern man.
However, the study of the articulations of the feet, hands, elbows and knees
and the muscular links show that the mode of locomotion of the
Australopithecus afarensis was much meant for climbing as it did for
walking.
In 1959, she found the skull pf a humanlike creature at Olduthropis, called
Australopithecus Boisei that was about 1.7 500, 000 years-old.
In 1978, she found footprints preserved in hardened volcanic ash at Laetoli,
Tanzania; the prints dated back to 36 000,000 years ago, suggesting that
human-like creatures had begun walking upright by then.
Louis Leakey and the other scientists named the discovery Homo habilis, a
fossil group now considered by most anthropologists to be the remains of
one of the earliest types of human beings.
Interesting Bits
• Leakey had led fossil-hunting expeditions in eastern Africa during
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the 1920’s.
Homo habilis lived in Africa about 2 million years ago.
The big discovery made in the summer of 1959 was exactly 100
years after Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species was published.
More than 20 sites were excavated in the 1940’s and 1950’s by Louis
and Mary Leakey at Olduvai, providing material dating back from 1.9
to 1.7 000, 000 millions years old.
Louis headed excavation missions after convincing the scientists that
the most important place to look for evidence of the earliest human
beings was in Africa.
Top: Olduvai Gorge, Left: Australopithecus africanus, Right:
Austrolopithecus Boisei
Hominid Evolution Chart on
the right.