Due to rapid depletion of the fossil fuel reserves and environmental concerns biodiesel has attracted a great deal of attention over the last few decades. In this study, heterogeneous catalysts derived from waste chicken bones were employed in the transesterification reaction of waste cooking oil for biodiesel production. The physicochemical properties of the synthesized catalysts were studied by various techniques such as differential thermal analysis/thermogravimetric analysis (DTA-TGA), BET surface area, X-ray diffraction (XRD), temperature programmed desorption of CO2 (TPD-CO2), energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectroscopy. The experimental results showed that the heterogeneous catalyst calcined at 900°C exhibited good catalytic activity in the transesterification of WCO, providing maximum biodiesel yield of 89.33 at 5.0g of catalyst loading, 15:1 methanol to oil molar ratio at temperature of 65°C in reaction time of 4h. The better catalytic activity of the aforementioned catalyst in the biodiesel reaction could be attributed to the presence of optimal number of catalytically active basic site density on its surface. Moreover, the catalyst was successfully recycled for 4 times for biodiesel production. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd.