Blog
From the Field: Stephanie Musgrave, Goualougo Triangle, Republic of the Congo
From the Field Leakey Foundation grantee Stephanie Musgrave has been in the field with the Goualougo Triangle Ape Project in the Republic of the Congo where she studies how the chimpanzees there make and use tools to gather termites and other resources such as ants, honey, seeds, and marrow.
Darwin: A Primate’s Tale
Primate Tales Darwin is a capuchin monkey who was born during a time of great prosperity for her group. She is the granddaughter of alpha male Pablo and the venerable alpha female Chupacabra. Darwin had a happy and relatively carefree childhood but her life since then has had its challenges.
Fossil of Smallest Old World Monkey Species Discovered in Kenya
Journal Article Researchers from the National Museums of Kenya, University of Arkansas, University of Missouri and Duke University have announced the discovery of a tiny monkey that lived in Kenya 4.2 million years ago.
Ancient Saharan Seaway Illustrates How Earth’s Climate and Creatures Can Undergo Extreme Change
Journal Article The region now holding the Sahara Desert was once underwater, in striking contrast to the present-day arid environment. This dramatic difference in climate over time is recorded in the rock and fossil record of West Africa during a time range that extends through the Cretaceous-Paleogene (KPg) boundary.
The Discovery of “Zinj”
Guest Post, Today in History On July 17, 1959, Mary Leakey left her camp and went out to search the layers of sediment in Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, as she and her husband Louis Leakey had done for almost 30 years. Their primary goal was to find fossils of our human relatives (hominins), and as hot, dusty, backbreaking, painstakingly slow and what many friends and fellow scientists might call impossible as that goal seemed, they were determined to reach it.
The Leakey Foundation Announces New Scholarship for East African Geologists and Botanists
Grants, The Leakey Foundation, Press Release The Leakey Foundation is proud to announce the Francis H. Brown African Scholarship. This scholarship fund was established to honor the life and work of Dr. Francis H. Brown, a geologist whose study of the Omo-Turkana basin helped build the timeline of human evolution.
Bonobo Diet of Aquatic Greens May Hold Clues to Human Evolution
Journal Article With support from The Leakey Foundation, scientists have observed bonobos in the Congo basin foraging in swamps for aquatic herbs rich in iodine. Iodine is a critical nutrient for brain development and higher cognitive abilities, and this new research may explain how the nutritional needs of prehistoric humans in the region were met.
World’s Smallest Bears Can Mimic Facial Expressions
Journal Article The world's smallest bears can exactly mimic another bear's facial expressions, casting doubt on humans and other primates' supremacy at this subtle form of communication.
Neanderthals Made Repeated Use of Open Air Settlement in Northern Israel
Journal Article The archaeological site of 'Ein Qashish in northern Israel was a place of repeated Neanderthal occupation and use during the Middle Paleolithic, according to a study funded in part by The Leakey Foundation and published June 26, 2019, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Ravid Ekshtain of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and colleagues.
A Shared Past for East Africa’s Hunter-Gatherers
Journal Article Languages that involve "clicks" are relatively rare worldwide but are spoken by several groups in Africa. The Khoisan language family includes a handful of these click languages, spoken by hunter-gatherer groups in southern and eastern Africa. But the grouping of these populations into a single language family has been controversial, with some linguists convinced that a few of the languages are too different to be classified together. A genomic study of 50 African populations, funded in part by The Leakey Foundation, adds some clarity to the relationships between these click-speaking groups and many others.
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