The Leakey Foundation

10/07/2026

Wildfires across Borneo are threatening critically endangered orangutans. The IUCN is calling for urgent action. We have sent emergency grants to two long-term research sites so far, but the need is greater than our funds. We're raising money for affected sites, including and . Please help if you can.

Fires are burning across Kalimantan, Borneo, including in forests that are home to 52% of all Bornean orangutans. At some of the world's most important orangutan research sites, staff and local community fire crews are working day and night to hold back the flames. "Their dedication is extraordinary...

09/25/2026

Happy World Gorilla Day! Learn 10 mountain gorilla facts along with questions scientists are researching right now.

A gorilla researcher shares mountain gorilla facts along with some of the questions researchers are working to answer now.

09/23/2026

A childhood sleepover at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) and the show Bones inspired Ariel N. Barrera to pursue a career working with fossils and bones. Now she's a Leakey Foundation grantee and PhD candidate at AMNH and the CUNY Center for Graduate Studies.⁠
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Her research aims to understand when early human relatives began to differ from other apes in their facial structure and dental anatomy, what drove those changes, and whether different parts of the jaw responded together or followed separate evolutionary paths. ⁠

Check the link in the first comment to read an interview with Ariel and learn about her and her work!
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Photos 1+3 by Daniel Kim ⁠
Photo 2 by .nb

09/21/2026

This is Wadi el-Hudi, in Egypt’s Eastern Desert. People have left traces of activity here for about 200,000 years. The area has dozens of archaeological sites, including Paleolithic stone tool sites, ancient Egyptian walled settlements, amethyst mines, and rock inscriptions dating to the Middle Kingdom and the Roman Period.

Want to see more places where Leakey Foundation grantees work?

Photos courtesy of Leakey Foundation grantee Zeljko Rezek.

09/19/2026

How much time did our ancestors spend in the trees, and how can we know? A new study published this week in Science Advances uses the strength of fossil limb bones to trace when human ancestors shifted to life on the ground.

Researchers did a comprehensive study of fossil limb bone strength and found that Australopithecus spent a lot of time in the trees, but by about 1.8 million years ago, early Homo did not.

Because bone adapts to the forces placed on it during life, the relative strength of arm and leg bones shows how an individual actually moved.

This research was funded in part by the Leakey Foundation.

Image: Femoral, humeral, and tibial diaphyseal sections and articular dimensions used in analyses. CC-BY-4.0

09/17/2026

How long have we been us? Is monogamy natural? Anthropologist Agustín Fuentes answers the internet's evolution questions.

Anthropologist Agustín Fuentes joins WIRED to answer the internet's...

09/16/2026

Critically endangered Bornean orangutans flee forests as staff at Rangkong research station work around the clock to stave off blaze

Critically endangered Bornean orangutans flee forests as staff at Rangkong research station work round the clock to stave off blaze

09/06/2026

This is OH 7, the type specimen of Homo habilis, one of the earliest members of our genus. This particular fossil is nicknamed Jonny's Child because it was found by Jonathan Leakey at Oldupai Gorge (then called Oduvai). ⁠
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Homo habilis means "handy man." It was given this name by Louis Leakey, Philip Tobias, and John Napier because they thought this was the species that made the thousands of stone tools also found around the gorge.⁠
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📸 Replica of OH 7 - Nachosan - Own work CC-BY-3.0

09/04/2026

Leakey Foundation grantee Matilda Brindle was recognized with an Ig Nobel prize for her research on the evolutionary history of kissing.

Researchers have been honored for their quirky, imaginative contributions to science at the 36th annual Ig Nobel Prizes.

09/02/2026

Humans may not have needed language to hunt, use tools, or manage life in a small group. A new study suggests that the reason spoken language developed may have had more to do with what happened after dark.

Learn how firelight may have extended social life after dark, creating the conditions for storytelling to shape the evolution of human language.