Paul E. Olsen (born August 4, 1953) is an American paleontologist and author and co-author of a large number of technical papers.

Growing up as a teenager in Livingston, New Jersey, he was instrumental in Riker Hill Fossil Site being named a National Natural Landmark as a teenager by sending President Richard Nixon a dinosaur footprint cast from the site.

His interests and research examine patterns of ecosystem evolution and extinction as a response to climate change over geological time, and Triassic and Jurassic Continental Ecosystems.

His research methods include paleoclimatology, structural geology, paleontology, palynology, geochemistry, and geophysics.

Professor Olsen is currently Arthur D. Storke Memorial Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University; Research Associate at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, the American Museum of Natural History and the Virginia Natural History Museum, from which he received the Thomas Jefferson Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Natural Science, in 2015.