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Author: Meredith Johnson

Grantee Spotlight: Pamela Akuku

Leakey Foundation Baldwin Fellow Pamela Akuku uses fossilized animal bones to reconstruct ancient environments and understand the animals and hominins of prehistoric times.

The extinction of the giant ape: A long-standing mystery solved

Giant creatures are usually associated with dinosaurs, woolly mammoths, or mystical beasts. But if you go back through the human lineage you’ll find a very distant relative that stood three metres tall and weighed around 250 kilograms. This was Gigantopithecus blacki, the mightiest of all the primates and one of the biggest unresolved mysteries in paleontology.

Songs to make the forest happy

Music is universal in all human cultures, but why? New Leakey Foundation-supported research explores the evolutionary function of music and singing. The study focuses on women from the Mbendjele BaYaka, a hunter-gatherer community in the Republic of the Congo with a strong musical tradition. This research offers intriguing insights into how music fosters social bonding and communication.

I [name], of [city, state ZIP], bequeath the sum of $[ ] or [ ] percent of my estate to L.S.B. Leakey Foundation for Research Related to Man’s Origins, Behavior & Survival, (dba The Leakey Foundation), a nonprofit organization with a business address of 1003B O’Reilly Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94129 and a tax identification number 95-2536475 for its unrestricted use and purpose.

If you have questions, please contact Sharal Camisa Smith sharal at leakeyfoundation.org. 

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