News

Leakey Foundation grantee Nina Jablonski is one of the “small but mighty population of people whose careers have been ignited and sustained by Leakey Foundation support, and whose research, in turn, has shed light on previously opaque mysteries of human and primate evolution.”

Twins have been rare in human history and can seem special for that reason. Our recent research suggests that twins were actually the norm further back in primate evolution.

Looking for your next great read about evolution, behavior, or biology? Check out this list of human evolution book recommendations from The Leakey Foundation’s scientific advisors and trustees.

Who were the Denisovans, where did they live, and why are they important to the story of humanity?

New research reveals fossil footprints that record two different species of hominins walking along the same Kenyan lakeshore at the same time, roughly 1.5 million years ago.

Looking for a new podcast? Executive Director Sharal Camisa Smith recommends Origin Stories episodes on music, food, and family dynamics.

Fifty years since the discovery of Lucy, what does this iconic fossil tell us about our evolutionary story? By Evan HadinghamAuthor of Discovering Us What marked out our ancestors from … Continued

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.