October Grit City Think and Drink

October 10, 2023
6:30PM – 7:30PM

Morotopithecus, Ekembo, and Friends: collaborative research on the adaptive environments of our earliest ape ancestors and all the other critters they lived with  

Kirsten Jenkins, Tacoma Community College 

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 – U Minnesota; BA -WWU) 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.

Grit City Think & Drink brings scholars and experts from various disciplines face-to-face with the public in a comfortable, lively atmosphere, either virtually or in person. The evening begins with a presentation or lecture (often interactive) followed by giveaways and a moderated Q&A. Grit City Think & Drink is free to the public and open to all ages.

Sponsored by the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences and hosted by UWT Associate Professor Jim Gawel.

Grit City Think & Drink presented by UWT in our Tacoma event space every 2nd Tuesday of the month. Open and free to the public!