News

In 1974, on a survey in Hadar in the remote badlands of Ethiopia, paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson and graduate student Tom Gray found a piece of an elbow joint jutting from the dirt in a gully. It proved to be the first of 47 bones of a single individual – an early human ancestor whom Johanson nicknamed “Lucy.”

Stephen Magohe is a geologist and assistant lecturer at the University of Dar es Salaam who is pursuing his PhD at the University of Calgary. In 2024, Magohe received a prestigious Francis H. Brown African Scholarship for his project “Investigating early Homo habitat through geoscience at Oldupai Gorge, Tanzania.”

How and when did people first come to Sicily? Scientists exploring coastal and underwater caves discover clues about Sicily’s first settlers.

New research in Nature solves the mystery of the origins of the Stonehenge Altar Stone, an enigmatic rock at the heart of the monument.

Learn about Margaret Furtner, a Leakey Foundation grantee using new technology to explore for fossil sites in South Africa’s Cradle of Humankind.

Celebrate World Gorilla Day with a never-before-seen lecture by Dian Fossey recorded at the Louis Leakey Memorial Symposium in 1973.

Learn about the Kakamega Monkey Project, one of the longest continuous studies of wild primates in the world.

Learn about Clara Mariencheck, a PhD Candidate in the Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology at the George Washington University whose research explores primate genetics, immunogenetics, and sociality. She received a Leakey Foundation grant in 2024 for her project called “How an extra X chromosome may enhance immunity.”

Researchers find the world’s oldest figurative art in a cave in Sulawesi, Indonesia. Using a novel dating technique, they dated the painting to 51,200 years old.

The Leakey Foundation is pleased to announce the recipients of our spring 2024 Leakey Foundation Research Grants.