Currently, Reed is studying fossils from the Hadar region of Ethiopia. To find the fossils, Reed and her colleagues walked for miles under the scorching Ethiopian sun, scouring the banks of the dried-up Awash River. Lucy, as she is fondly called, became an international celebrity when her bones were discovered in 1974 by Institute of Human Origins founder Donald Johanson. Lucy belonged to a previously unknown hominid species called Australopithecus afarensis , one of the earliest ancestors of modern humans. As the 21st century looms, Reed traces the steps of Lucy's kin and their descendents.
Reed works to reconstruct environments that surrounded early humans.
The Hadar site is important to anthropologists because it contains fossils of two hominid species from different time periods. Homo habilis , a more evolved hominid, roamed the area 2.5 to 1.6 million years ago. The Awash River did most of the hard excavation work for Reed and her colleagues. We don't have to dig down to find things. In general, the older stuff is found along the river.