Mary Leakey Quotes


I got too old to live in the bush. You really need to be youngish and healthy, so it seemed stupid to keep going.


Citations

Wilford, John Noble. "Mary Leakey, 83, Dies; Traced Human Dawn." The New York Times, 10 Dec. 1996, p. B14.

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Mary Leakey
Mary Leakey
  • Born: February 6, 1913
  • Died: December 9, 1996
  • Nationality: British
  • Profession: Scientist

Mary Douglas Leakey, FBA was a British paleoanthropologist who discovered the first fossilised Proconsul skull, an extinct ape which is now believed to be ancestral to humans. She also discovered the robust Zinjanthropus skull at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, eastern Africa. For much of her career she worked with her husband, Louis Leakey, at Olduvai Gorge, where they uncovered fossils of ancient hominines and the earliest hominins, as well as the stone tools produced by the latter group. Mary Leakey developed a system for classifying the stone tools found at Olduvai. She discovered the Laetoli footprints, and at the Laetoli site she discovered hominin fossils that were more than 3.75 million years old.