Leakey, Mary Douglas (1913-1996), was a British archaeologist and anthropologist who found fossils, tools, and other evidence of prehistoric human beings in Africa. She recorded 1,600 prehistoric rock paintings and described the development of early stone tools. In 1959, she found the skull of a humanlike creature at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. This creature, first named Zinjanthropus but now called Australopithecus boisei, lived about 1,750,000 years ago. Its discovery proved that humanlike creatures called australopithecines lived in eastern Africa. In 1978, Leakey found footprints preserved in hardened volcanic ash at Laetoli, Tanzania. The prints, which date to 3,600,000 years ago, suggested that humanlike creatures had begun walking upright by that time.
Mary Douglas Nicol was born on Feb. 6, 1913, in London. She married the British anthropologist Louis Leakey in 1936. She died on Dec. 9, 1996.
