Tim D. White (born August 24, 1950) is an American paleoanthropologist and Professor of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley.
White has taught and mentored many paleoanthropologists who have subsequently gone on to prominence in the field, including Berhane Asfaw, William Henry Gilbert, Yohannes Haile-Selassie, and Gen Suwa and thousands of undergraduate and graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley.
Some representatives of Indigenous Nations of California protest that he failed to comply with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), though no court has made such a finding.
Laura Miranda, chair of the California Native American Heritage Commission, opined that his breach of NAGPRA's codes was "a major moral, ethical, and potentially legal violation."
[9] In 1996, White, along with paleontologist Berhane Asfaw discovered fossils of a 2.5 million-year-old species BOU-VP-12/130 Australopithecus garhi, which is thought to predate H. habilis tool use and manufacturing by 100,000 to 600,000 years.