English archaeologist and paleontologist whose crucial discoveries
include Proconsul africanus, a 1.7 million-year-old dryopithecine
(primitive ape) in 1948, at Rusinga Island, in Lake Victoria; then the
1.75 million-year-old hominid Zinjanthropus (later reclassified as
Australopithecus boisei) at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, in 1959; and
Homo habilis, a new species contemporary with, but more advanced than,
Zinjanthropus in 1960-1963. Also remarkable was her excavation in 1976
at Laetoli, Tanzania, of fossilized hominid footprints, preserved in
volcanic ash, which proved that our ancestors already walked upright
3.6 million years ago.
