Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
The British-born scientist Mary Leakey (1913-1996) was one the foremost paleoanthropologists of the 20th century. Alongside her husband Louis Leakey (1903-1972), she was responsible for several important breakthroughs in East African prehistory. Arguably her most important discovery occurred after her husband’s death when, during an excavation in Tanzania in 1976, she and her team found a set of 3.6-million-year-old early hominid footprints that had been improbably preserved by a combination of volcanic ash and rain. These footprints revealed, for the first time, the way in which our earliest bipedal ancestors walked upright.
This video from Sweet Fern Productions recounts how Leakey’s passion for paleoanthropology led to the discovery of what are now known as the Laetoli footprints, which continue to shape our understanding of our early ancestors – and by extension, ourselves.
Directors: Flora Lichtman, Sharon Shattuck
Website: BioInteractive
video
Family life
One family’s harrowing escape from postwar Vietnam, told in a poignant metaphor
10 minutes
video
Fairness and equality
Visit the small Texas community that lives in the shadow of SpaceX launches
14 minutes
video
Film and visual culture
Our world has very different contours when a millimetre is blown up to a full screen
8 minutes
video
War and peace
A frontline soldier’s moving account of the fabled ‘Christmas truce’ of 1914
12 minutes
video
History of technology
Replicating Shakespearean-era printing brings its own dramas and comedy
19 minutes
video
Animals and humans
The wild tale of a young animal keeper, an angry tiger and a torn circle net
10 minutes
video
Technology and the self
Why single Chinese women are freezing their eggs in California
24 minutes
video
The ancient world
Petty squabbles and bloody battles – the life of an ancient Roman soldier
18 minutes
video
Astronomy
The remarkable innovations inspired by our need to know the night sky
5 minutes