News

What makes humans such “adaptable” and flexible creatures, especially when it comes to what we eat? Primates, in general, can survive on a wide variety of foods, but there are also a lot of species with a range of really specialized diets, like those focused on insects, leaves, or fruit, and all of these foods have different challenges when it comes to digesting them. Mareike Janiak’s research is focused on understanding how the species in these different dietary niches have adapted to digesting their foods.

New research on an Australopithecus fossil called “Little Foot” helps us better understand how these ancient hominins lived. The findings suggest that this specimen could climb and move in trees as well as on the ground.

Margaret Buehler’s research strives to answer a seemingly simple, yet important, evolutionary question about primates that live in groups: why do specific primates choose to live together?

University travel restrictions and personal health considerations due to COVID-19 may impact Leakey Foundation grant project timelines. Read more to learn how this issue can be addressed.

After careful consideration, The Leakey Foundation has made the decision to cancel and reschedule our spring Speaker Series events in Houston and San Francisco. If you have purchased a ticket, please contact the museum you purchased your tickets from.

At a moment when society feels dangerously polarized, fragmented and unstable, the Leakey Foundation Survival Symposium “Our Tribal Nature: Tribalism, Politics, and Evolution” offers a forum for understanding our human urge to form alliances. Videos from this event are now available to watch and share.

On February 27, The Leakey Foundation hosted a free online workshop called “Science Through Story” with science communication expert Sara ElShafie. This workshop was designed to help scientists tell compelling stories about their research. It was part of a new Leakey Foundation initiative that provides career development support to our grant recipients.

An international research team led by scientists from the U.S. and Spain, supported in part by The Leakey Foundation, has discovered a nearly complete cranium of an early human ancestor, estimated to about 1.5 million years ago, and a partial cranium dated to about 1.26 million years ago, from the Gona study area in Ethiopia’s Afar State.

Clare Kimock is studying free-ranging rhesus macaques on the island of Cayo Santiago, Puerto Rico, one of the longest-running primate field sites in the world.

A team of international researchers, with support from The Leakey Foundation, dug deep to find some of the oldest African DNA on record, in a new study published in Nature.