Erik Trinkaus is the Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor Emeritus in Arts & Sciences and Professor Emeritus of Physical Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. He received his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin in 1970, M.A. in 1973, and Ph.D. in 1975 from the University of Pennsylvania, where his doctoral dissertation was titled "A Functional Analysis of the Neandertal Foot." His academic career includes appointments as Assistant Professor and Associate Professor at Harvard University from 1975 to 1983, progression from Assistant Professor to Regents’ Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico from 1983 to 1997, and at Washington University from Professor in 1997, Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor from 2002, to emeritus status. Trinkaus is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1996, the Academy of Science of Saint Louis since 2001, and professional societies such as the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, Paleoanthropological Society, Société d’Anthropologie de Paris, and Anthropological Society of Nippon. He has been awarded the Arthur Holly Compton Award for Faculty Achievement from Washington University in 2011 and Faculty Mentor Awards from the Graduate School in 2005 and 2013.

Trinkaus specializes in paleoanthropology, with research on the paleobiology of late archaic humans, particularly Neandertals, and early modern humans across Eurasia. His interests encompass the evolution of the genus Homo, functional morphology and biomechanics of fossil remains, paleopathology, taphonomy, life history parameters, thermal adaptations, ecogeographical patterning, and behavioral inferences from anatomical evidence. Key publications include the monographs The Shanidar Neandertals (1983), The Neandertals: Changing the Image of Mankind (1993, with P. Shipman), Portrait of the Artist as a Child: The Gravettian Human Skeleton from the Abrigo do Lagar Velho (2002, ed. with J. Zilhão), Early Modern Human Evolution in Central Europe: The People of Dolní Věstonice and Pavlov (2006, ed. with J. A. Svoboda), The Early Modern Human from Tianyuan Cave, China (2010, with H. Shang), The People of Sunghir: Burials, Bodies and Behavior in the Earlier Upper Paleolithic (2014, with A. P. Buzhilova, M. B. Mednikova, and M. V. Dobrovolskaya), and The People of Palomas: The Neandertals from the Sima de las Palomas del Cabezo Gordo, Southeastern Spain (2017, ed. with M. J. Walker). Considered by many the world’s most influential scholar of Neandertal biology and evolution, his work has profoundly shaped understandings of Pleistocene human evolutionary transitions, admixture, and behavioral complexity.

Professional Email: trinkaus@wustl.edu