Mary Douglas Nicol Leakey (1913 – 1996) English Paleontologist and Anthropologist
For many years Mary Leakey lived in the shadow of her husband, Louis Leakey, whose reputation, coupled with the prejudices of the time, led him to be credited with some of his wife's discoveries in the field of early human archaeology. Yet she has established a substantial reputation in her own right and has come to be recognized as one of the most important paleoanthropologists of the twentieth century. It was Mary Leakey who was responsible for some of the most important discoveries made by Louis Leakey's team. Although her close association with Louis Leakey's work on Paleolithic sites at Olduvai Gorge—a 350-mi (564-km) ravine in Tanzania—has led to her being considered a specialist in that particular area and period, she has in fact worked on excavations dating from as early as the Miocene Age (an era dating to approximately 18 million years ago) to those as recent as the Iron Age of a few thousand years ago.
Mary Leakey was born Mary Douglas Nicol on February 6, 1913, in London. Her mother was Cecilia Frere, the great-granddaughter of John Frere, who had discovered prehistoric stone tools at Hoxne, Suffolk, England, in 1797.
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