Legacy of the Leakeys

The Laetoli Footprints document bipedal hominins walking across Africa more than 3.5 million years ago. Here, Mary Leakey, who led the team that discovered the fossils, poses with a cast of the footprints. Photograph by Kenneth Garrett, National Geographic

Generations of women have explored our world with the National Geographic Society, and three generations of women explorers from the Leakey family have brought the history of the world to our community.

In 1978, Mary Leakey and her team left a lasting impression on the world of paleoanthropology when they discovered the “Laetoli Footprints,” trace fossils of our hominin ancestors more than 3.5 million years old.

The footprints were most likely made by two Australopithecus afarensis walking through soft, wet volcanic ash in eastern Africa (what is now Tanzania). When the nearby volcano erupted again, layers of more volcanic ash covered and preserved the earliest known footprints of early humans. [...] National Geographic Blog