Commemorating the 100th birthday of the British archaeologist and anthropologist Mary Leakey, Google has posted a doodle on its homepage. The doodle features Mary Leakey on an archaeological site, who looks busy with her excavation work.
The doodle features two Dalmatians as Mary was an animal lover who was almost always accompanied in the field by three or four dalmatians. It also exhibits one of her major discoveries 'the Laetoli footprints', and some tools used in archaeology.
The first and last two letters of the word Google are seen in the backdrop, while Mary Leakey and one of the Dalmatians replace the second O and second G of the word Google, respectively.
Born on February 6 1913, Mary Leakey is widely known for discovering the first fossilised Proconsul skull, an extinct ape now believed to be ancestral to humans, and the robust Zinjanthropus skull at Olduvai Gorge.
Along with her husband Louis Leakey, Mary uncovered the tools and fossils of ancient hominines. She is also credited for developing a system for classifying the stone tools found at Olduvai, and discovering the Laetoli footprints, which received recognition by the public for providing convincing evidence of bipedalism in Pliocene hominids.
In 1933, she was a 20-year-old archaeological illustrator in London when she met Louis Leakey. A married man with two children, Leakey left his family to begin a new life with Mary that revolved around the search for the orig.