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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Leakey family
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Anthropologists who have made many significant discoveries relating to early man in east Africa. Louis Leakey (1903–72) and his wife Mary (Mary Nichol, b. 1913, m. 1936) worked mainly at *Olduvai Gorge in northern Tanzania. In 1959 they found a skull of *Australopithecus, believed to be about 1.75 million years old; in 1964 they discovered skull fragments of another extinct species of early man, which they named *Homo habilis (handy man). After her husband's death Mary Leakey began excavating at Laetolil, 40km/25m south of Olduvai, and found remains of a species of man dated to about 3.75 million years ago. Meanwhile their son Richard (b. 1944) had begun working at Lake Turkana in northern Kenya; his best-known find there, in 1972, was an almost complete skull of Homo habilis.
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