News

Leakey Foundation grantee Daniel García Martínez investigates 300,000-400,000-year-old fossils in Spain to learn about early human behavior and tool use.

Stone tools dating to at least 1.04 million years ago have been found on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. This means early hominins made a major sea crossing from the Asian mainland much earlier than previously thought – and they likely didn’t have any boats.

René Bobe is a Leakey Foundation grantee and recipient of the 2025 Gordon P. Getty Award. His research examines the relationship between climate and evolution, with a focus on the environments and ecology of human origins in Africa.

Scientists long thought that Neanderthals were avid meat eaters. New research suggests their diet had a secret ingredient: maggots.

Claire Kirchhoff, a Leakey Foundation grantee and professor at Marquette University, studies baboon skeletons from Gombe National Park to explore how bones reflect behavior, health, and social life.

How much time did our ancestors spend in trees? A new study on savannah-living chimpanzees could help answer questions about the origins of upright walking.

Babalola Jacobs is a Leakey Foundation Baldwin Fellow and PhD student from Nigeria who studies how early humans adapted to climate change in West Africa.

Leakey Foundation grantee Madeleine Kelly reconstructs early African ecosystems and explores how they shaped human evolution.

Jacqueline Garnett is a PhD candidate at Washington University in St. Louis whose research asks what the impact of previous evolution is on future evolutionary potential. Her Leakey-funded project is focused on the role of diet in evolution.

Raquel Hernando, a postdoctoral researcher at CENIEH and Leakey Foundation grantee, reconstructs the diets of fossil primates to understand how they adapted to environmental change.