Archives for fossil

08.22.18

Enigmatic Fossils Rewrite Story of When Lemurs Got to Madagascar

Journal Article
Discovered more than half a century ago in Kenya and sitting in museum storage ever since, the roughly 20-million-year-old fossil Propotto leakeyi was long classified as a fruit bat. Now, it's helping researchers rethink the early evolution of lemurs, distant primate cousins of humans that today are only found on the island of Madagascar, some 250 miles off the eastern coast of Africa.
04.13.18

Fossil Finders: Kamoya Kimeu

Guest Post, Fossil Finders
Most paleontologists track their careers in terms of funding and expedition cycles, searching for fossils in finite windows of time and often spending months, even years waiting to return to promising sites. It is rare that someone is able to devote his or her life to searching for fossils, yet one man has done exactly that. That man is Kamoya Kimeu.
08.31.17

Origin Stories: Ancestor

Origin Stories
Just recently, the news media announced the discovery of a fossil ape called Alesi. This remarkable fossil was found in Kenya, and it’s from a time period where there’s a big blank spot in the fossil record of our family tree.
06.13.17

From the Field: Julien Louys, Sumatra

From the Field
In 1887 M. Eugène Dubois set out to what was then the Dutch East Indies in search of the missing link. More than a century later, Leakey Foundation Grantee Julien Louys followed in Dubois' footsteps to look for fossils in the caves of Sumatra.