Leakey, Mary Douglas (1913–1996)

English archaeologist and anthropologist. In 1948 she discovered, on Rusinga Island, Lake Victoria, East Africa, the prehistoric ape skull known as Proconsul, about 20 million years old; and human footprints at Laetoli, to the south, about 3.75 million years old.

She was born in London and became assistant to an archaeologist. Her collaboration with Louis Leakey began when she illustrated a book he was working on. In 1936 Mary Leakey began excavating a Late Stone Age site north of Nairobi, and with her husband discovered the remains of an important Neolithic settlement.

The Leakeys together and separately carried out excavations in Kenya, and accumulated evidence that East Africa was the possible cradle of the human race. By the middle of the 1960s Mary was living almost continuously at the permanent camp they had established at Olduvai Gorge.

She described her work in the book Olduvai Gorge: My Search for Early Man 1979.