MARY LEAKEY (KENYA)
Wherever palaeontology is discussed , one cannot fail to mention the mother of fossil hunting in Kenya- Mary Leakey. She came to Kenya in 1937 with her husband Louis, and in the subsequent decades worked on many excavations.
An important discovery of Mary’s was the first fossil skull of the extinct Miocene primate Proconsul — a 16 million-year-old link between monkeys and apes.
In 1959, Mary found the Zinjanthropus (Australopithecus boisei) fossil that propelled her family name to worldwide fame.
In 1974, she commenced excavations at nearby Laetoli, and in 1976 her team found huge numbers of animal footprints that had been fossilised in ash deposited by a volcano. In 1978, they found what would be her greatest discovery, adjacent footprint tracks that had been left by two bipedal hominids. The footprints provided definitive proof that hominids walked upright.