News

Paleoanthropologist and conservationist Richard Erskine Frere Leakey, whose discoveries helped show that humankind evolved in Africa, died on January 2, 2022, at age 77.

Origin Stories podcast turned six years old in 2021! We produced 10 episodes and reached several important milestones this year. Here’s a look back at our year in podcasting.

Human origins research is powered by donors like you.

This December, your donation to The Leakey Foundation will be quadruple-matched thanks to Jorge and Ann Leis and the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation.

s ago an ancient human relative, Australopithecus sediba, lived in what is today South Africa, near a cave called Malapa that’s a part of the Cradle of Humankind. Until recently, it was not clear how much the species spent climbing in trees and walking on two legs on the ground.

The oldest unequivocal evidence of upright walking in the human lineage are footprints discovered at Laetoli, Tanzania in 1978, by paleontologist Mary Leakey and her team. The bipedal trackways date to 3.7 million years ago. Another set of mysterious footprints was partially excavated at nearby Site A in 1976 but dismissed as possibly being made by a bear. A recent re-excavation of the Site A footprints at Laetoli and a detailed comparative analysis reveal that the footprints were made by an early human

Sebastián Ramírez Amaya is a PhD candidate who is studying chimpanzees in Uganda in order to learn about the evolution of pair-bonding in humans.

Tessa Cicak is a PhD candidate studying whose research is testing ideas about how primates respond to competition over food resources.

Society increasingly accepts gender identity as existing along a spectrum. The study of people, and their remains, shows that sex should be viewed the same way.

An international team of researchers, led by Professor Lee Berger, a palaeoanthropologist from South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand, has revealed the first partial skull of a Homo naledi child from the Rising Star cave.

Join The Leakey Foundation for three exciting virtual events this November!