Tim White (anthropologist)

Tim White (born August 24, 1950 in Los Angeles, California) is an American anthropologist.

White majored in biology and anthropology at the University of California, Riverside. He received his Ph. D in physical anthropology from the University of Michigan. In 1974 White worked with Richard Leakey's team at Koobi Fora, Kenya. Richard Leakey was so impressed with White's work he recommended White to his mother, Mary Leakey, to help her with hominid fossils she had found at Laetoli, Tanzania. White eventually took a job at the University of California, Berkeley where he collaborated with Donald Johanson and F. Clark Howell. White later went on to find what was then the oldest known human ancestor: 4.4 million-year-old Ardipithecus ramidus. White made yet another discovery that involved a 2.5 million-year-old Australopithecus garhi. White is currently working on a ramidus skeleton that was found in 1995. He has mentored a number of prominent young paleoanthropologists, such as Susan Antón, Berhane Asfaw, David DeGusta, Yohannes Haile-Selassie, and Gen Suwa. He is co-director of the recently formed Human Evolution Research Center.