Dr Jane Goodall’s cause of death has been confirmed, two weeks after it was announced she had died of natural causes in her sleep.
The renowned conservationist died of a cardiac arrest on October 1, TMZ reports.
The 91-year-old’s death was announced by the Jane Goodall Institute that same day, sharing the chimpanzee expert had died of natural causes in California.
According to KNBC, Goodall had been on a speaking tour of the United States and was set to attend a tree-planting ceremony on the day of her death.
Her death certificate, issued by the County of Los Angeles Department of Public Health, states she was found at a Beverly Hills residence at 8.30am.
Dr Jane Goodall was an English ethologist and one of the world’s foremost experts on chimpanzees. Photo / Michael Neugebauer
Goodall’s pioneering study of wild chimpanzees completely reshaped behavioural understandings of primates.
She travelled to Gombe, Tanzania, in 1960, where she discovered chimpanzees used tools and expressed empathy for one another.
The revolutionary findings proved primates have similar social behaviours to humans, capably developing their own personalities and complex interpersonal dynamics.
She went on to found the Jane Goodall Institute in 1977 and her youth program Roots & Shoots in 1991, eventually establishing offices across the globe.
In a statement, the institute said her work “transformed science, and she was a tireless advocate for the protection and restoration of the natural world”.
On her last visit to Aotearoa in 2024, Goodall urged Auckland school students to make ethical choices as consumers.
Her final message, a video played for 1000 Californian students the day of her death, echoed this sentiment.
“I think the... key thing is to realise that every day on this planet, you make a difference, and if you start thinking about the consequences of the small choices you make ... what you buy, where did it come from, how was it made?
“If you start thinking like that, and millions of people around the world thinking like that, then we start to get the kind of world that we cannot be too embarrassed to leave to our children.”
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