MARY D. LEAKEY |
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Mary
Douglas Leakey was recognized in her lifetime as one
of the world’s most distinguished fossil hunters.
Because of her many important discoveries and her
dedication to field research, she is considered a
giant in the study of human origins.
She was born Mary Douglas Nicol
in London on February 6, 1913. She was the daughter
of a popular landscape painter, Erskine Nicol, and
Cecilia Frere. Mary herself was interested in art
and archaeology at an early age. As a child she
frequently travelled to France with her parents.
There, she visited a museum of prehistory and was
allowed to participate in archaeological digs where
she found ancient stone tools. She also visited the
French caves at Font de Guame and La
Mouthe, which are famous for their prehistoric
paintings. As a result of her father’s death in
1926, Mary and her mother moved back to London. She
rebelled against the constraints of the Catholic
schools to which her mother sent her. In 1930, she
began auditing university courses in archaeology and
geology. She soon established herself as an
authority on flint points and was recognised for her
mastery of scientific illustration. She was
introduced to Louis Leakey in 1933. Louis invited
her to join him in Africa to draw the stone tools he
had found. Three years later (after Leakey’s divorce
from his first wife Frida) they were married. They
had three sons (Jonathan in 1940, Richard in 1944,
and Philip in 1948).
Among her many scientific
accomplishments, Mary is credited with the discovery
of Proconsul africanus in 1948,
Zinjanthropus boisei (now known as
Australopithecus boisei) in 1959, Homo
habilis in 1960, and an amazingly
well-preserved 89-foot long trail of early human
footprints found at Laetoli (1979). These footprints
have been dated to about 3.6 million years old and
their discovery proved conclusively that our
ancestors were at that time practicing bipedal
locomotion. Mary and her team continued to find
important hominid and prehistoric animal fossils
until her retirement from active fieldwork in 1983.
Upon retirement, she moved to
Nairobi from Olduvai Gorge, where she had lived for
nearly 20 years. In retirement, she continued to
contribute to science, writing articles about her
lifetime of incredible discoveries. She died in 1996
at the age of eighty-three.
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