Who was Mary Douglas Leakey?
Q: Who was Mary Douglas Leakey?
A: Mary Douglas Leakey was a British archaeologist and anthropologist who spent most of her life working in East Africa, particularly in Tanzania and Kenya.
Q: What was her major discovery?
A: Mary Douglas Leakey discovered the first fossilized Proconsul skull, an extinct primate with a mixture of Old World monkey and ape characteristics, and also discovered the robust Zinjanthropus skull at Olduvai Gorge.
Q: What is the significance of the Proconsul skull?
A: The significance of the Proconsul skull lies in the fact that it was the first fossilized primate discovered by Mary Leakey with the mixture of Old World monkey and ape characteristics, and the position of Proconsul in the evolution of the apes is still not clear.
Q: What is her contribution to the Leaky tradition?
A: After the death of her husband, Mary Leakey became a leading palaeoanthropologist and played an important role in establishing the Leaky tradition by training her son, Richard, in the field.
Q: What is Leakey's classification system?
A: Mary Leakey developed a system for classifying the stone tools found at Olduvai.
Q: What else did Mary Leakey discover?
A: Mary Leakey discovered the Laetoli footprints, which showed the bipedal locomotion of early humans.
Q: When did Mary Leakey become the director of excavation at Olduvai?
A: Mary Leakey became the director of excavation at Olduvai in 1960.
