The REACHE (Research on Eastern African Catarrhine and Hominoid Evolution project) embarked on something that had never been done in paleoanthropology (study of human and ape evolution) before; gathered several independent and interdisciplinary research groups to use similar methods and share data for reconstructing past environments to create a regional model of how early apes evolved. What our team found upended decades-old paradigms on what it means to be an ape and calls into question narratives on the origins of later bipedalism in our lineage. This work is made possible by thoughtful relationships both within our research groups and the local communities where we work. 
 
Kirsten Jenkins (PhD, University of Minnesota; BA, Western Washington University) is a Biological Anthropologist and Archaeologist at Tacoma Community College where she teaches courses on bioanthropology, archaeology, primates, and human osteology. Her research interests are in reconstructing predator-prey relationships of fossil apes and fossil humans. Kirsten has been studying fossil site formation in eastern Africa on various projects spanning the last 20 million years of human and ape evolution since 2009.