AnthroQuest Fall 2023

ANTHROQUEST THE LEAKEY FOUNDATION NEWSLETTER

Volume 48 Issue 1 September 2023

INSIDE The Long View: Gordon Getty's 50 Years of Leadership Gordon P. Getty Award Turns Ten Who Made the First Stone Tools?

Grants Awarded Research Round Up

PRESIDENT'S LETTER

Leakey Foundation Board of Trustees, Scientific Executive Committee members, Advisor, and staff.

San Francisco Ferry Building, 2023 Photo: Andy Kuno

THE LEAKEY FOUNDATION

BOARD OF TRUSTEES Gordon P. Getty Chairman Jeanne Newman President Nina L. Carroll Alice Corning Don Dana Elise Brown Ersoy Erica Brown Gaddis J. Michael Gallagher Billy Getty Mark Getty Henry Gilbert Duggan Jensen Mark Jordan Chester T. Kamin Dana Lajoie Julie M. LaNasa Jorge Leis Anne Maggioncalda Diana McSherry Camilla M. Smith Michael Smith Naoma Tate

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SCIENTIFIC EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Dr. John Fleagle Co-chair Dr. John Mitani Co-chair Dr. Zeray Alemseged Dr. Brenda Bradley Dr. Craig Feibel Dr. Kristen Hawkes Dr. Nina Jablonski Dr. Richard Klein Dr. Steven Kuhn Dr. Meave Leakey Dr. Daniel Lieberman Dr. John Mitani Dr. Martin Muller Dr. Tom Plummer Dr. Robert Seyfarth Dr. Joan Silk Dr. Anne Stone Dr. Christian Tryon Dr. Carol Ward Dr. Alexander Harcourt Emeritus

STAFF Sharal Camisa Smith Executive Director H. Gregory Program Officer Arielle Johnson Education Director Meredith Johnson Communications Director Niba Nirmal Communications Coordinator Jennifer O'Reilly Administrative Assistant Rachel Roberts Director of Finance and Administration Brandon Upchurch Grants Analyst AnthroQuest is a publication of The Leakey Foundation.

Contact info@leakeyfoundation.org if you would like to update your mailing information.

In May we celebrated the 50th anniversary of Gordon Getty becoming a trustee of The Leakey Foundation. It has been an honor to serve as president under his remarkable chairmanship of the organization so many of us cherish. For those of us on the Board of Trustees, serving The Leakey Foundation is not only an avocation, it is a constant pursuit to further our mission. It is a close-knit community.

Gordon Getty has set an example of leadership for 50 years. Participating both financially and actively in even the smallest detail of the foundation’s work, he has been a guiding beacon in furthering its mission. He has helped create our identity as a bedrock of support for paleoanthropologists and primatologists, beginning with the “Trimates” Jane Goodall, Biruté Mary Galdikas, and Dian Fossey.

Over the years he has personally supported countless young scientists just starting out and throughout their careers.

Gordon Getty has a deep intellectual and creative vision, a broad overview as well as a detailed and introspective interest in research questions like: Where did we Homo sapiens originate? What has made us human? In fact, Gordon Getty’s lifelong passion for music and his many compositional achievements reflect the most profound and creative aspects of what makes us human.

Above:

President Jeanne Newman with Jane Goodall at a luncheon hosted by Gordon Getty in 2023.

He is a luminary in many worlds, and for us at The Leakey Foundation, he has helped shape a world that is constantly expanding in our knowledge of humanity and the beauty and complexity of the fragile planet we all share.

Jeanne Newman President The Leakey Foundation

His leadership has been the primary driving force of The Leakey Foundation. It has been an honor to know Gordon Getty and to work alongside him to further The Leakey Foundation’s mission.

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FEATURE

Fossil hippo skeleton and associated Oldowan artifacts at the Nyayanga site in July 2016.

Photo: Tom Plummer, Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropology Project

We found 2.9-million-year-old stone tools used to butcher ancient hippos.

Were they made by our ancestors?

Julien Luoys Deputy Director, Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution, Griffith University Leakey Foundation grantee Thomas Plummer Professor, Queens College, the CUNY Graduate Center and NYCEP Member of The Leakey Foundation’s Scientific Executive Committee

On the shores of Lake Victoria in Kenya, a short gully extends southwest from the looming Mount Homa. Eroding from the sediments are some of the oldest-known stone tools used to butcher large animals, as well as the oldest remains of one of our early cousins, Paranthropus – a genus we think co-existed with our direct ancestors.

Similar tool and fossil discoveries had been made before, in different places and at different times. But to find these all together in one place, from sediments this ancient, is truly extraordinary.

In research published earlier this year in Science, we explain how findings at the Nyayanga locality are changing the way experts think

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about the origins of Oldowan tools and what they were used for by hominins–a group that includes modern humans, extinct humans, direct ancestors and close cousins.

It also raises questions about who was really responsible for making the stone tools we’d previously attributed to Homo habilis and closely related species.

Fossils on the Homa Peninsula Nyayanga is a typical pastoral valley situated on the Homa Peninsula in southwestern Kenya.

This peninsula has long been known to produce various fossils. In 1996, a multidisciplinary team led by one of us (Plummer) began work on a two-million-year-old site called Kanjera South.

This work produced a wealth of fossil remains from large mammals, as well as stone tools thought to have been used by our genus, Homo.

During a field season at Kanjera South, a local man named Peter Onyango who was working with the team suggested we investigate some fossils and stone tools eroding out of a valley on the shores of Lake Victoria. This new locality, named Nyayanga after the nearby beach, was situated on a donkey track leading to the lake.

The first stone tools and fossils we collected were eroding out from the gully walls. Beginning in 2015, a series of excavations eventually returned a trove of 330 artefacts and 1,776 animal bone fragments from a range of species characteristic of open savannah and open woodland environments.

The bones included animals we’re familiar with today, such as giraffes, antelopes, elephants and hippos. But they also included extinct forms such as the three-toed Eurygnathohippus, an extinct horse relative, Pelorvis, a giant buffalo, and Megantereon, a sabre-toothed cat.

Of particular interest were the remains of two teeth from the extinct hominin Paranthropus – nicknamed the “Nutcracker Man” Above: (Left) Stone tool flake in situ.

by Louis Leakey as (Right from top) Examples of an its large flat teeth are Oldowan percussive tool, core thought to have been and flakes from the Nyayanga site, used to process hard percussive tool found in 2016, or fibrous vegetable Oldowan core found in 2017, Oldowan flakes found in 2016 matter. These teeth, and 2017. one intact and the other a fragment, were Photos: Tom Plummer, the first direct evidence Homa Peninsula of an extinct hominin Paleoanthropology Project ANTHROQUEST

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on the Peninsula after more than a century of research.

This suggests raw hippo was on the menu for the hungry hominins.

What made their recovery even more surprising were the tools we found associated with them.

Alongside Paranthropus’s teeth were some stone tools belonging to a technology known as the Oldowan, characterised by three main forms: hammerstone, core, and flake.

Adding to that, the tooth fossils are the oldest Paranthropus remains ever found, and the associated tools are the oldest-known Oldowan tools. The second-oldest were uncovered some 1,200 kilometres away in Ethiopia, and dated to about 2.6 million years.

Oldowan tools had long been associated with our own genus, Homo, and are often considered a milestone in human evolution. While we can’t demonstrate Paranthropus actually made these tools, this species is so far the only suspect at the scene of the crime.

A brave old world

Early signs of butchery

There’s no evidence Paranthropus was actively hunting megafauna. Most likely the hominins making the Oldowan tools were scavenging animals that died naturally, or had been killed by the sabre-toothed cats, hyenas or giant crocodiles known from Nyayanga fossil collections.

So, what was a plant-chomping hominin using these tools for? Well it turns out in addition to processing plants – the evidence of which we could see on the tools’ edges – these lithics were also used to make hippo tartare.

The Nyayanga deposits provide a glimpse into an ancestral world that’s possibly radically different from any we had pictured. In doing so, they’ve raised even more questions about hominin evolution.

We found evidence of meat cutting from the wear on the artifact edges – but the smoking gun was the cut and percussion marks found on a variety of fauna, including two hippo partial skeletons associated with these stone tools.

Who were these resourceful toolmakers? Could they have included Paranthropus? How far back does carnivory go? And just how old and widespread is the innovative Oldowan toolkit?

Despite more than 100 years of exploration on the Homa Peninsula, our research is raising as many questions as answers.

Of course, this wasn’t the first time cut marks had been found on large mammal bones. In fact, early evidence of butchery was reported by our team at Kanjera South back in 2013.

However, our comprehensive dating program at Nyayanga revealed the locality’s deposits to most likely be about 2.9 million years old. This means they’re probably the oldest stone tools found to have butchered hippos and processed plant material.

Not only that, but this is about two million years before the first evidence that people used fire.

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This research would not have been possible without the generous support of The Leakey Foundation and its donors. The Leakey Foundation first funded research on the Homa Peninsula in 1987, and over the last three decades has provided funding seven more times. The work at Nyayanga described here and at other Homa Peninsula localities is a direct testimony to the commitment The Leakey Foundation has for supporting paleoanthropological field work. ❖

Members of the excavation team plotting and recording the position of fossils and artifacts in July 2017 at the Nyayanga site, including the Paranthropus molar and fossils from a hippo skeleton.

Photo: Tom Plummer, Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropology Project

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Mary Leakey, Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, Mary Leakey, Raymond Dart, Clark Howell, and others. The event’s main organizers were Nancy and Barbara Pelosi, whom Gordon remembers as “very effective” in promoting it; all seats in the 1,000-seat auditorium were sold out.

The Long View

Meeting Louis

Gordon Getty's 50 years of visionary leadership “We stand today at a very important crossroad,” said Louis Leakey, speaking in May 1971, at a symposium that was broadcast live by KQED, San Francisco’s public television station. “Either man will, in a very short time, face inevitable destruction and, instead of another milestone in progress, we shall erect a tombstone to humanity; or, if we take the right turning now, if we insist on the things that reason tells us we must insist upon, we can erect another milestone—a milestone that will lead us and our children, and our grandchildren, and many generations to come, in the direction of another 20 million years of progress.”

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Evan Hadingham Senior Science Editor, NOVA Author of Discovering Us: 50 Great Discoveries in Human Origins

As Gordon Getty watched the speech on KQED, he was captivated by Leakey’s message and his account of the extraordinary fossil discoveries that he and his wife Mary had recently made in East Africa. At the time, Getty was 37. The fourth child of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, he was born in Los Angeles and raised in San Francisco where he attended college. Gordon Getty would eventually pursue many interests as a businessman, philanthropist, wine entrepreneur, and acclaimed composer, including operas that have been performed around the world.

A few months after the symposium, Getty and his wife Ann met Louis Leakey at a social event in San Francisco. Getty recalls him as “a live wire— 100% energy—with small patience for small talk.” The Gettys soon became ardent supporters of the recently formed Leakey Foundation along with two other couples who were among their closest friends: Ron Pelosi and his wife Barbara, and Ron’s brother Paul and his wife Nancy.

(More than a decade would elapse before Nancy Pelosi entered politics and began her rise to the top of the Democratic Party.)

1973 proved to be a pivotal year for the Foundation’s activities. That year, Gordon Getty became a trustee, and he and Ann Getty funded grants given to Louis Leakey’s “Trimates”—Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Mary Galdikas.

In December, the Foundation staged a landmark two-day symposium titled ‘In Search of Man’ in San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts, featuring

Elated by this success, the Gettys and Pelosis began planning further symposia that would tour other U.S. cities. Barbara Pelosi once recalled that organizing the symposia was “one of Gordon's greatest enthusiasms” and that he concerned himself with every detail, from writing promotional brochures to hauling sacks of mail to the post office to make sure of their prompt delivery. His efforts greatly strengthened The Leakey Foundation’s focus on public educational outreach, which remains a crucial part of its mission today.

Over the next decades, the Gettys’ involvement with research and fieldwork deepened. Ann Getty began personally funding expeditions in Ethiopia and renovations at the National Museum in Addis Ababa. She joined Tim White’s field team that excavated the 4.4-million-year-old fossil skeleton of Ardipithecus in the Gordon Getty with Dian Fossey, blistering heat Jane Goodall, and Biruté Mary Galdikas at a Leakey Foundation of Ethiopia’s event in the 1970s.

Middle Awash Photo: region.

The Leakey Foundation Archive

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Meanwhile, Getty was elected Chairman of the Board of The Leakey Foundation in 1980. His consistent support provided stability and growth for the Foundation’s finances, enabling it to offer funding that was hard to obtain anywhere else. He directly supported the work of many of the field’s most important scientists, such as Jane Goodall at Gombe, Donald Johanson and Bill Kimbel at Hadar, Ethiopia, and Sileshi Semaw and Michael Rogers at Gona. And his underwriting of the Baldwin Fellowships gave a crucial jump-start to the careers of future leaders such as Berhane Afsaw, Emma Mbua, Job Kibii, and others.

Sticking to the mission Over the years, The Leakey Foundation has stayed focused on funding human origins research and fieldwork projects that span a wide variety of disciplines.

“We retain the same specialties and we’re still a midwife,” says Getty. “We don’t make huge grants, and we prefer to support new startups in the research.” Occasionally, initiatives have surfaced to expand that mission. One such proposal came from Richard Leakey in 1973, who argued that the Foundation should drop support for primate studies. Getty successfully argued that the Foundation should reject the proposal and continue supporting a broad spectrum of research, reflecting Louis Leakey’s own multifaceted interests. “I’ve always advised against that kind of change,” he says. “As it is, we have most of the world's authorities on human origins—they’re either on our Scientific Executive Committee or we’re in close relations with them and we consult with them. And that way, we're pretty confident that what we grant is worth granting.”

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Gordon Getty with Jane Goodall at The Leakey Foundation's 40th anniversary gala in 2008.

Photo: The Leakey Foundation Archive 10

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In addition to his endorsement of The Leakey Foundation’s traditional goals, Getty remains open-minded about its future direction. “We have to adapt to circumstances, like any organization,” he says.

“So I have no clear opinion about where the foundation should go—it’s not crystal clear to me. I do think we should continue to focus on rather narrow specialties where we know what we’re talking about, and where other means of support are really hard to find for these kinds of long-term research projects.”

Gordon Getty’s crucial role “I really can’t over-emphasize the role that Gordon Getty has played in furthering global understanding of human origins and in the evolution of behavior more generally,” notes primatologist Susan Perry. “Louis Leakey must be credited with recognizing how important it is to study extant species—the great apes in particular, but also species that have converged with humans in interesting ways—in order to properly interpret the fossil record and reconstruct the evolutionary history of humans. But Gordon Getty provided important financial backing for Leakey’s intellectual goals, and has been active in supporting individual projects that he himself finds intellectually exciting.”

In 2013, The Leakey Foundation established the Gordon P. Getty Award to recognize the achievements of scientists who show ‘extraordinary originality and dedication in their intellectual and professional pursuits while exemplifying a multidisciplinary approach to human origins research.’ As can be seen from the thumbnail sketches of the first ten recipients that follow, the Getty Award reflects The Leakey Foundation’s recognition of a diverse, rising generation of exceptional scientists. They are also a fitting tribute to the essential part played

by Gordon Getty for over half a century in the Foundation’s efforts to bring to light humanity’s ancient heritage. ❖ Above left: Irven DeVore, Gordon Getty, and John Maynard Smith during "The Evolution of Social Behavior" symposium organized by Mr. Getty.

Photo: Walt Mancini, The Leakey Foundation Archive Above right: 2001 Leakey Prize Laureates, Garniss Curtis and Richard Hay share a laugh with Gordon Getty after the prize ceremony.

Photo: The Leakey Foundation Archive ANTHROQUEST

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GORDON P. GETTY AWARD

2014: Thure Cerling

The Gordon P. Getty Award Celebrating Excellence in Multidisciplinary Research

Evan Hadingham Senior Science Editor, NOVA Author of Discovering Us: 50 Great Discoveries in Human Origins

2013: Sileshi Semaw Sileshi Semaw has dedicated nearly three decades to investigating stone toolmaking sites in the rugged badlands of Gona near Hadar, Ethiopia. Dating to 2.6 million years ago, some of the stone tool finds from Gona are associated with animal bones bearing cut marks, among the earliest evidence for processing meat. The Gona researchers, co-directed by Michael Rogers, concluded that the toolmakers had carefully selected high-quality volcanic cobbles and struck them into sharp-edged flakes with considerable skill. Continuing support from Gordon Getty and The Leakey Foundation has recently enabled Semaw’s team to expand its efforts beyond the area of its early discoveries.

Semaw says, “We have discovered fossil hominins and archaeological materials from key time intervals in human evolution dating as far back as six million years ago, and as far forward as the early Holocene, confirming that Gona is one of the few places in the world where the entire evolutionary history of our ancestors can be investigated.

Put simply, the Gona team owes much of our success to the generous and continuous support of Gordon Getty and The Leakey Foundation.”

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Over five decades, University of Utah geophysicist and geologist Thure Cerling explored subjest as diverse as elephant conservation, the age of the Grand Canyon, and the evolution of monsoons.

However, the heart of his work lies in understanding the environments of East Africa that were the setting for pivotalsteps in human evolution. Cerling's doctoral research analyzed the chemistry of modern Rift Valley lakes to help reconstruct the formation of ancient lakes. In the 1970s, he collaborated with geologist Frank Brown to establish a timeline for the volcanic rock and ash layers at Olduvai Gorge and the Turkana Basin, vital for establishing the age of the hominin fossils found there by the Leakeys. He later innovated the use of isotopes in tooth enamel to study past and present diets of humans and animals. “The questions we ask about human evolution prompts studies of modern ecology,” he says, “and the answers we learn from modern ecology can then be used to answer the original question. The Leakey Foundation provides critical support for bridging the different disciplines of science to learn about human evolution.”

2015: Clara Scarry

Clara Scarry specializes in long-term studies of the social behavior of primates in Ecuador, Argentina, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A bioanthropologist at Sacramento State University, Scarry's fascination with primates started at age six when she discovered Jane Goodall’s book My Life With Chimpanzees; “I read it and I was set, it put me on my path.” she says. Today, Scarry's research focuses on understanding the evolution of cooperation. To do this, she has established a long-term field study of capuchin monkeys in Argentina’s Parque Nacional Iguazú. Her research examines the connections between intergroup aggression, intragroup relationships and individual decision-making. Her work offers valuable insights into the complex processes that underlie primate behavior.

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GORDON P. GETTY AWARD 2016: Margaret Crofoot

2018: Susan Perry

Behavioral ecologist Margaret Crofoot of Konstanz University employs cuttingedge remote sensing technology to study wild primates. Crofoot is particularly drawn to the question of how primates overcome individual conflicts of interest to make group decisions. At Kenya’s Mpala Research Center, her team outfitted 25 olive baboons with GPS collars and accelerometers to record the movements of each animal over a month. What she found was surprising. Despite baboons’ hierarchical, top-down social order, no single animal dictates where the baboon troop forages for food. Instead, the baboons tend to follow wherever the majority is headed, strategy that may help safeguard them against predators like leopards. Crofoot has also investigated stone tool use by capuchin monkeys in Panama and is currently participating in ICARUS, an international project tracking animals from the ultimate observing platform: space. A satellite-based system, ICARUS picks up GPS signals from individual animals, allowing scientists to monitor wildlife movements over vast regions. Crofoot plans to use ICARUS to track the behavior of hundreds of animals in multiple baboon troops simultaneously.

For over 25 years, Susan Perry has led the Lomas Barbudal Monkey Project, revealing extraordinary cultural behaviors among Costa Rica's capuchin monkeys. With sustained support from The Leakey Foundation, Perry's research has corrected early misconceptions and explored the complex depths of capuchin social dynamics. For example, during her first two years of fieldwork, it looked as if all male juvenile and adult capuchins shared equal mating privileges. Then came a shock: genetic paternity evidence showed that a single alpha male fathered over 90% of the group’s offspring.

Long-term observations have also been crucial for revealing behaviors that are passed down among different groups. The strangest of these are trance-like sessions in which pairs of capuchins lock one another in sometimes painful embraces, testing each other’s patience and trust; in one case, a monkey slips its finger between the eyelid and the eyeball of its partner for minutes at a time. “Often the most exciting discoveries emerge unexpectedly from longterm data collection,” Perry notes. “None of this would be possible without Gordon Getty’s tireless financial and intellectual support of The Leakey Foundation’s mission.”

2017: Fredrick Manthi Fredrick Manthi is a paleontologist and director of antiquities, sites, and monuments at the National Museums of Kenya in Nairobi. Manthi’s interest in human origins was kindled as a child by the books on prehistory brought home by his father, who worked with Mary Leakey at Olduvai Gorge during the 1970s. Two Leakey Foundation Baldwin Fellowships enabled Manthi to earn his undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He co-founded the West Turkana Paleo Project and has notably specialized in studying small rodent fossils, critical indicators of ancient environmental changes. In a landmark discovery in West Turkana in 2000, Manthi unearthed the braincase of a 1.55-million-year-old Homo erectus along with the jawbone of a later Homo habilis. These find upended traditional theories by suggesting that the two speices had co-existed for nearly half a million years, rahter than evolving in a linear fashion. Support from The Leakey Foundation, he says, "helped shape my career as a paleontologist, and has enabled work that has made significant contribution to understanding the evolutionary history of hominin and non-hominin species, and the environmental contexts in which this happened. Further, this support has motivated me to push for the training of more Africans in the paleosciences.”

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2019: Yohannes Haile-Selassie Yohannes Haile-Selassie is director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University. He is one of the foremost experts in paleoanthropology, known for major fossil discoveries in Ethiopia's Rift Valley.

At the Woranso-Mille site near Hadar, his team found remains of Australopithecus afarensis, Lucy’s species, coexisting with at least two other types of early hominins.

In 2019, Haile-Selassie announced an even more dramatic discovery at Woranso-Mille—the nearly complete skull of yet another species, Australopithecus anamensis—significantly enriching our understanding of early hominin diversity in the Afar region. Haile-Selassie is a co-founder of the African Rift Valley Research Consortium, a far-reaching interdisciplinary project conducting large-scale research on fundamental questions of geology, ecology, and hominin evolution in a rift setting.

“Receiving an award named after Gordon Getty,” he says, “made me think that hard work pays off. It made me feel that I can now see myself as exemplary to the next generation of African scholars who are being supported by The Leakey Foundation to thrive and succeed in their intellectual and professional pursuits.”

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GORDON P. GETTY AWARD 2020: Richard Kay Throughout his influential career, Richard Kay has pursued a broad multidisciplinary path to studying the past. During the 1970s, Kay spent two years in a Harvard lab observing how monkeys crush, shear, and grind different types of food. Then he began an exhaustive microscopic study of how the tooth shapes of living primates reflect the kinds of foods they consume; his aim was to apply that knowledge to fossil teeth and reconstruct the diets of extinct species. The method Kay developed, paleobiologist Peter S. Ungar notes, “quickly became the standard for measuring teeth in paleontology laboratories the world over, and it's still used widely today.” Across four decades, Kay has discovered many extinct South American primate species and his research has been fundamental to understanding the origins and evolution of primates. Without The Leakey Foundation to support his interdisciplinary approach, Kay says,“I am not sure that I could have done what I've done so far without their help. Their funds allowed me to explore and generate projects that applied information based on the study of living animals to reconstructing the behavior of extinct ones. Their funding has been critical, not just for me, but for the field as a whole.”

2021: Liran Samuni A postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, Liran Samuni’s research focuses on intergroup relationships and cultural behavior among chimpanzees and bonobos. She is currently investigating an intriguing case of tool use by chimpanzees in Moyen-Bafing National Park in Guinea, West Africa, where they use long sticks to gather algae from streams by poking and twirling them in the water, like the action of a cotton candy vendor.

Previously, Samuni spent four years observing bonobo behavior at the Kokolopri Bonobo Research Project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where she discovered that two different groups had distinct cultural preferences for the choice of animals they hunted for meat, despite living close together in the forest.

Understanding how chimpanzees and bonobos acquire such special behaviors offers, Samuni says, “an ideal context to explore the evolutionary pathway of human material culture.” The Leakey Foundation’s support has been essential for the long-term observations that are the foundation of her work. “It is a great honor to receive the award in Mr. Getty's name, recognizing his significant contributions to our field,” Samuni says. “Working with wild apes to explore my research passions is a privilege. The award has opened up new avenues for me to advance as a scientist and to share my research with a wide audience.”

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2022: Carol Ward Anatomist and paleoanthropologist Carol Ward of the University of Missouri is an expert in analyzing how the fossil bones of our early ancestors can give clues to their muscular anatomy and biomechanical capabilities. In 2010, Ward co-founded the West Turkana Paleo Project, an international fieldwork program organized with the National Museums of Kenya to search for ancestral human fossils and evidence of ancient environments.

The WTPP’s long list of discoveries includes the earliest fossil bones of hominin hands essentially identical to our own, dating to 1.42 million years ago, at the site of Kaitio, Kenya.

Reconstructing the anatomy and functioning of fossil hands and feet is a special focus of Ward’s current research. For this challenging task, her team is producing the first virtual 3D anatomical atlas of the hands and feet of a chimpanzee, gorilla, and modern human; the atlas will be a significant contribution to understanding the evolution of these distinctive extremities. As the most recent recipient of a Getty Award, Ward writes that it is “especially meaningful because my first grant was from The Leakey Foundation, so they effectively set me on the course that has gotten me here today. The same is true for the majority of my colleagues, which is a testament to the foundation and Mr. Getty’s role in making possible much of the research that has shaped our understanding of human evolution for over half a century.” ❖

Point your phone camera at the code below to watch the Gordon P. Getty Laureate Lectures!

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GRANTS

Isabelle Clark

Alexandra Sacco

John Lower

December 2022 Research Grants Behavioral Research Adrián Arroyo, Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social Savanna chimpanzee technology from Dindefelo (Senegal): A primate archaeology approach Isabelle Clark, University of Texas at Austin The development of territorial conflict and group identity in wild chimpanzees John Dalton, University of Colorado Cognitive ecology of nocturnal thick-tailed galagos and implications on primate cognitive evolution Rhianna Drummond-Clarke, University of Kent Ecological drivers of bipedalism and arboreality in savanna-dwelling chimpanzees

Sara Lucci, University of Texas at San Antonio Early life adversity and gut microbiota composition in Colobus vellerosus Jordan Lucore, University of Michigan Gut microbiome-host endocrine interactions in white-faced capuchins (Cebus imitator) Hasinala Ramangason, University of Calgary

Jack Richardson, George Washington University The role of social play in the development of gorillas Alexandra Sacco, Washington University A dynamic microbiome: Implications for reproduction and plasticity

Assessing stone-tool selection decisions in wild Burmese long-tailed macaques (Thailand)

Emma Thurau, Hunter College

Mechanisms of collective inter-group aggression among wild chimpanzees in Uganda

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Emma Thurau

Feast and famine: Nutrigenomics of frugivorous lemurs in southeastern madagascar

Johanna Henke-von der Malsburg, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Athropology

John Lower, University of New Mexico

Sara Lucci

Balancing nutrients and toxins in wild monkey diets: A chemical phenotype approach Hasinala Ramangason

Jordan Lucore

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GRANTS

Anastasia Eleftheriadou

Alexis Uluutku

Paleoanthropology Rebecca Cook, Duke University Biomechanics of the early Homo pelvis using finite element analysis Anil Devara, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda Investigating multiple fossil beds from Motravulapadu, Andhra Pradesh Edwin Dickinson, New York Institute of Technology Determinants of grasping strength in primates

Paleoanthropology continued Neysa Grider-Potter, University of Texas at San Antonio Locomotor energetics in sifaka: Contexts and consequences of terrestrial locomotion using arboreal anatomy Nicholas Holowka, State University of New York at Buffalo The kinematics and energetics of natural terrain walking in Batek foragers of Malaysia Laura Hunter, University of Chicago

Carpal morphology, covariation, evolvability in catarrhines, and their impact on inferring locomotor Geo-archaeoinformatic approaches and multiscale mapping behaviors in extinct hominoid taxa of coastal paleosols and archaeology in eastern South Africa Spencer Irvine, Yale University Anastasia Eleftheriadou, Universidade do Algarve

Zandra Fagernäs, University of Copenhagen Decontamination of skeletal elements for the palaeoproteomic study of hominin evolution Christian Gagnon, Boston University Validating selection using expression UCP1 in fibroblastderived brown adipocytes 20

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Early primate locomotion: The importance of leaping to primate origins Kelsey Jorgensen, Univ. of California, Los Angeles How does hypoxic stress shape the genomic and physiological evolution of Nepali Sherpa?

Catherine Kitrinos, Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst

Nathan Thompson, New York Institute of Technology

Bats, baboons, and berries: Microbial transmission at Kasanka National Park

Did angular momentum conservation govern the evolution of human bipedalism?

Risa Luther, University of Minnesota

Alexis Uluutku, George Washington University

Differential tooth wear among primate dietary categories

The role of character displacement and ecological niche incumbency in hominin evolution

Hila May, Tel Aviv University Back to Emireh Cave: Tracing the origin of modern humans Kate McGrath, State University of New York, Oneonta 3D analysis of dental stress markers in the Atapuerca hominins Elena Robakiewicz, University of Connecticut

Peter Ungar, University of Arkansas Dental microwear and diets of Paleogene primates from the Fayum Kelsey Witt, Brown University Identifying super-archaic introgression using demographic modeling

Early/Mid-Pleistocene environments of Paleolake Suguta, Kenya: Implications for hominin migration and evolution Irene Solano Megías, CENIEH Techno-cognitive skills of Homo sapiens ca. 80-70 ka: The Middle Stone Age (MSA) at Gona, Ethiopia

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Peter Ungar

Neysa Grider-Potter

Kelsey Jorgensen

Rebecca Cook

Risa Luther

A new generation of scientists, learning by doing.

Journey along with archaeology students from across Africa and experience the joys, thrills, and challenges of archaeological fieldwork. The story unfolds at one of South Africa's flagship human origins research sites, led by Leakey Foundation Baldwin Fellow and Research Grant recipient Justin Pargeter.

Simply point your phone camera at the code to listen and subscribe!

Kahsay Nugsse Tesfay Anil Devara

Kate McGrath

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ANTHROQUEST

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LEGACY SOCIETY NEWS

LEGACY SOCIETY NEWS

The F. Clark Howell Legacy Society is a community of visionary individuals who are making the science of human origins part of their lasting legacy.

The gift of knowledge

Owen and Kris O'Donnell Founding Members of the F. Clark Howell Legacy Society

By planning a future gift to The Leakey Foundation, members of the Legacy Society ensure that our work will continue for generations to come.

Regardless of the gift's size or scope, your investment will make a lasting impact. We invite you to learn more about the benefits of joining the F. Clark Howell Legacy Society.

Contact Sharal Camisa Smith by phone at (415) 561-4646 or by email at sharal@leakeyfoundation.org.

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Lucy is a dramatic example of an enduring legacy gift. Her fossils were preserved for millions of years until they were discovered by Leakey Foundation grantee Don Johanson in Ethiopia in 1974. Her gift to us was evidence of the course of hominin evolution.

Each of us has the capacity to leave a legacy that will enable future generations to learn more about human evolution. We can do this by making a gift in our trusts or wills to sustain The Leakey Foundation’s mission. These funds will be given as research grants to scientists whose exploration and discoveries expand our knowledge of who we are as a species.

Providing an estate gift to The Leakey Foundation is not as complicated as Lucy’s journey through time, but it has the capacity to provide expansive opportunities for countless years into the future. Please join us in making a legacy gift, and become a participant in the process to advance scientific knowledge about our shared human story. ❖

ANTHROQUEST

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LEAKEY FOUNDATION RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS Going down! How downclimbing shaped ape anatomy The flexibility in our shoulders and elbows—allowing us to do everything from reaching the top shelf to pitching a baseball—may have surprising roots. New Leakey Foundation-supported research by Luke Fannin and colleagues, suggests apes and early humans likely developed these agile joints as a sort of "braking system" for safely coming down from trees.

As early humans gradually moved from dense forests to open savannas, these versatile limbs took on new roles. They became invaluable for a variety of tasks such as hunting and gathering food and making and using tools.

Join the adventure!

These Leakey Foundation Fellows are having the experience of a lifetime. They are on a private tour in Indonesia's Liang Bua Cave with members of the team that discovered the Hobbit (Homo floresiensis).

What was on the menu for Neanderthals in Italy?

A surprising new study analyzing over 27,000 animal remains at two fossil sites in Italy dating to 50,000–44,000 years ago reveals diverse Neanderthal survival strategies. Matteo Romandini and colleagues found that despite being near the sea, the Roccia San Sebastiano Neanderthal group almost exclusively hunted and ate red deer. In contrast, the inland Riparo del Broion Neanderthals had a varied diet including red deer, fish, shellfish and beaver. This unexpected choice in food sources sheds new light on how Neanderthals adapted and changed their diets in the later stage of their existence.

What can you do for $84?

You can buy a new sweater, have dinner at a restaurant... or you can become a Leakey Foundation Fellow and invest in groundbreaking scientific discoveries.

When you donate $84 each month for a year, you will become a Leakey Foundation Fellow and join an exclusive community of scientific patrons. As a Fellow you will gain access to private programs that connect you with researchers and their work like never before.

By the lakeshore: The ancient environment of the Turkana Basin The Turkana Basin is a key site for understanding human evolution, but its deep history also holds a key to understanding how humans adapt to climate change. Recent Leakey Foundation-supported reseach by Kathryn Ranhorn and colleagues combines multiple lines of evidence to reconstruct how the region formed and changed over time. This large-scale study also reveals the presence of humans around 52,000 to 43,000 years ago as lake levels rose and fell and the plant and animal communities changed in response. The authors conclude that there is a need for continued landscape-scale archaeological studies across other important and complex regions.

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You make this work possible! Be part of the next big discovery.

Donate today!

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Why your steady support matters As a Fellow, your monthly contributions are more than a donation–they're an investment in the quest to understand our shared human story.

With your support, we can sustain long-term research, invest in exploration, and answer big, bold questions about what it means to be human.

Ready to make a lasting impact? Become a Fellow today! leakeyfoundation.org/fellows

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Save the Dates October 19, 2023 Lunch Break Science How lemurs taste, smell, and see the world Dr. Elaine Guevera Virtual Program

October 25, 2023 Young Professionals Group Zombiology: What zombie movies can teach us about evolution Dr. Jason Lewis Virtual Program

November 14, 2023 Leakey Foundation Lectures The Botanic Age: Plants and Human Evolution Dr. Dean Falk Houston Museum of Natural Science A recording will be available online

leakeyfoundation.org/events AnthroQuest is made possible by support from: Camilla and George Smith, the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, and the Joan and Arnold Travis Education Fund.