Jane Goodall, renowned chimpanzee researcher and animal advocate, dies at 91

Jane Goodall, who documented the behavior and social lives of chimpanzees and later became a leader of the animal conservation movement, died on Wednesday.

Jane Goodall, a renowned researcher who documented the behavior and social lives of chimpanzees and later became a leader of the animal conservation movement, died Wednesday.

Goodall was 91. She died of natural causes while she was in California as part of a speaking tour, the Jane Goodall Institute announced in a statement.

"Dr. Goodall’s discoveries as an ethologist revolutionized science, and she was a tireless advocate for the protection and restoration of our natural world," the statement said.

Jane Goodall appears in the television special "Miss Goodall and the World of Chimpanzees" in 1965.CBS via Getty Images fileGoodall, who was born in Britain, became famous first for her pioneering work with chimpanzees in Tanzania in the 1960s. She fastidiously documented how the animals lived and interacted in research that would continue over several decades.

She took an “unorthodox approach” to her research of chimpanzees, according to the foundation, by “immersing herself in their habitat and their lives to experience their complex society as a neighbor rather than a distant observer.”