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With the discovery of Zinjanthropus at Olduvai Gorge in 1959, my grandmother Mary Leakey pioneered the research in East Africa with my grandfather Louis. Many more spectacular fossil finds have since been made, both in Africa and elsewhere, by many researchers driven to understand our past.

In my junior year, I studied geology on Saturday mornings at the Museum of Natural History. Mineralogy has always been a major interest.

I would really love to go on an archaeological dig.

Such discoveries have led me, and other geologists, to reconsider the evidence previously derived from caves brought forward in proof of the high antiquity of Man.

As an undergraduate, I had an opportunity to go on a number of archeological digs. So I had experience excavating, digging up remains of ancient Indian villages in the Midwest and in the Southwest.

So much of the physical world has been explored. But the deluge of data I get to investigate really lets me chart new territory. Genetic data from people living today forms an archaeological record of what happened to their ancestors 10,000 years ago.

I am a geologist.

Through the study of fossils I had already been initiated into the mysteries of prehistoric creations.

Analysis of soil, grave goods and skeletons has been key to our understanding of archaeology and the migration of peoples, as well as their daily lives. But in mainstream history, we tend to stick to documents.