Mary Douglas Nicol Leakey was born February 6, 1913 in London, England. Because of her father’s profession as a painter, she and her family rarely lived in one town for very long. She grew up in many countries including England, France and Italy. Though it was a difficult childhood, she was thankful they moved to the Dordogne. It was there at age eleven that her interest was sparked in prehistory after meeting Abbe Lemozi, who was excavating at the Cabrerets. Upon her father’s death in 1926, Mary’s life changed drastically. Her mother sent her to a Catholic convent where she was repeatedly expelled.

Though Mary’s childhood, education was not at all impressive, she had resolved to earn a degree in prehistory after seeing the caves of the Dordogne. As a result of stone-hard determination, she began attending lectures at the University of London concerning archaeology and geology.

Mary’s first opportunity to enter the field occurred when her incredible drawing skills were discovered by Dr. Gertrude Canton-Thompson who asked her to illustrate her book, The Desert Fayoum. Dr. Canton-Thompson played matchmaker for Mary by arranging for her to meet Louis Leakey while he was giving a talk at the Royal Anthropologist Institute. Mary impressed him by showing him her illustrations and he asked her to illustrate his book, Adam’s Ancestors. She accepted and their relationship grew from there.

In May of 1934, Mary began her first important excavation at Hembury Fort in Devon. Her leader, Dorothy Liddell, was an expert in excavation techniques and taught Mary many things which proved very useful in her later work in Africa. In September of 1934, Mary performed her own excavation at Jaywick Sands near Clacton in Essex and published her first scientific paper.

Mary and Louis spent from 1935 to 1959 at Olduvai Gorge in the Serengeti Plains of northern Tanzania where they worked to reconstruct many Stone Age cultures dating as far back as 100,000 to two million years ago. They documented stone tools from primitive stone-chopping instruments to multi-purpose hand axes.

In October of 1947, while on Rusinga Island, Mary unearthed a Proconsul africanus skull (pictured upper left) which was the first skull of a fossil ape ever to be found. It was dated to be twenty million years old. Today only three others are known. In 1955, Mary and Louis were jointly awarded the Stopes Medal from the Geological Association for their hard work and discoveries.

A 1.75 million-year-old Australopithecus boisei skull (pictured lower left) was uncovered in 1959. Not long afterwards, a less robust Homo habilis (pictured upper right) skull and bones of a hand were found. Upon reconstruction, the opposable thumb of the hand was proven to be capable of precise manipulation. Both the fossils were believed to be of stone-tool peoples. They continued to excavate and found many more remains. In 1965 the duo uncovered a Homo erectus cranium (pictured lower right) which was one million years old.

Mary’s first trip to the United States came in March of 1962, when she and Louis traveled to Washington to jointly receive the Gold Hubbard Medal which was the highest honor from the National Geographic Society. In 1969, she earned her first Honorary Degree from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

After her husband died in 1972, Mary continued her work at Olduvai and Laetoli. She discovered Homo fossils at Laetoli which were more than 3.75 million years old, fifteen new species and one new genus. From 1978-81 Mary and her staff worked to uncover the Laetoli hominid footprint trail (pictured to the right) which was left in volcanic ashes 3.6 million years ago. The years that followed were filled with research at Olduvai and Laetoli, the follow-up work and preparing publications.

Though technically defined as an archaeologist, Mary chose to follow a route of interesting research relating to physical anthropology. She is known mostly for the excavation of a two million-year-old fossilized human skull in 1959. She has also worked to help the world understand that the evolution of humans follows a principle rather than a theory.

Mary Leakey died on Monday, December 9th, 1996 at age 83.

Hominid Evolution by Mary Leakey

Information provided by: http://www.anthro.mankato.msus.edu