Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • Family of British and Kenyan archaeologists, anthropologists, and paleontologists, including Louis (1903–1972), who used a series of fossil discoveries in Tanzania made largely by his wife Mary (1913–1996) to argue influentially that humans had evolved in Africa. Several members of their family have continued their research.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun English paleontologist (son of Louis Leakey and Mary Leakey) who continued the work of his parents; he was appointed director of a wildlife preserve in Kenya but resigned under political pressure (born in 1944)
  • noun English paleontologist (the wife of Louis Leakey) who discovered the Zinjanthropus skull that was 1,750,000 years old (1913-1996)
  • noun English paleontologist whose account of fossil discoveries in Tanzania changed theories of human evolution (1903-1972)

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