Leslie Aiello

Leslie Aiello is a British-American paleoanthropologist known for co-developing the expensive tissue hypothesis with Peter Wheeler, which proposes that the evolutionary expansion of the hominin brain was made possible by a corresponding reduction in the size of the digestive tract, enabled by dietary shifts toward higher-quality foods. Her research has addressed various aspects of human evolution, including locomotion, body size, and the relationship between ecology and adaptation in early hominins. Aiello served as president of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and has held academic positions in both the United States and the United Kingdom.