Google, today, commemorates Mary Leakey's 100th birthday anniversary with an attractive doodle. Leakey, a renowned British archaeologist and anthropologist, was born on February 6, 1913 in London, England and is well known for her significant discoveries and exploring the fossils of the ancient hominines. She collaborated with her husband Louis Leakey through a large part of her career and her three sons also entered the same field. She died on December 9, 1996 at the age of 83. Leakey's discoveries included the fossilised Proconsul skull, an extinct ape that is believed to be ancestor to humans. Another discovery was that of the Zinjanthropus skull, an early hominin, at Olduvai Gorge. She is also credited with developing a system to classify stone tools found at Olduvai as well as discovering Laetoli footprints. Over the course of her career, Leakey wrote four books.
Her passion towards unearthing the fossils was somewhat influenced by John Frere, an antiquarian, and Sheppard Frere, an archaeologist. Moreover, she had a chance to accompany Elie Peyrony during an excavation at Les Eyzies, where she came across collection scrapers and other tools from the dump. It is believed that at this phase her interest in prehistory gradually sparked. Google's doodle to mark the 100th birth anniversary of Mary Leakey with an image of a female archaeologist working at an excavation site marked with footprints. She is surrounded by archaeological tools like brush, leaf-and-square and trowel, while two dogs play around the site.
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