Tim White (anthropologist)
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Tim White (born August 24, 1950 in Los Angeles, California) is an American Paleoanthropologist and Professor of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is most famous for his discovery of "Lucy" with Donald Johanson, Yves Coppens and Maurice Taieb.
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 took a job at the University of California, Berkeley in 1977 and collaborated with J. Desmond Clark 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 an Ar. ramidus skeleton that was found in 1995. He has mentored a number of prominent paleoanthropologists, such as Susan Antón, Berhane Asfaw, David DeGusta, Yohannes Haile-Selassie, and Gen Suwa. He is director of the Human Evolution Research Center and co-director, with Dr. Berhane Asfaw, Dr. Yonas Beyene, and Dr. Giday WoldeGabriel, of the Middle Awash Research Project.
- Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences
- Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
- David S. Ingalls Jr. Award from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History
- Member of the National Academy of Sciences
- Distinguished Alumnus of the Year (2000) at the University of California, Riverside.
- List of fossil sites (with link directory)
- List of hominina (hominid) fossils (with images)
- On the Trail of our Human Ancestors Interview - Google Video