Professor Richard Butler PhD

2007 – PhD, University of Cambridge
2002 – BSc Geology, University of Bristol

Richard completed his undergraduate degree in Geology at the University of Bristol (1999–2002), followed by a PhD in vertebrate palaeontology at the University of Cambridge (2002–2006). He subsequently worked for three years as a postdoc at the Natural History Museum in London, before moving to the Bavarian State Collection for Palaeontology in Munich, first as a Humboldt Fellow and then as a DFG Emmy Noether junior research group leader. He joined the University of Birmingham as a Birmingham Fellow in 2013, and was promoted to full Professor in 2017.

Currently, Richard serves as Director of Research & Knowledge Transfer for the College of Life & Environmental Sciences. In this role he has strategic leadership and oversight of all research activity across the four Schools that make up the College. He previously held other leadership roles at Birmingham, including as College Director of Global Engagement (2020-2022), lead for the REF2021 submission in the area of Earth & Environmental Sciences, and Academic Keeper of the Lapworth Museum of Geology through its transformative redevelopment (2014–2016).

Richard’s research focuses on three key themes: early to middle Mesozoic tetrapod diversity, including the early evolution of dinosaurs; the long-term patterns and drivers of biodiversity on land; and the management and use of geological heritage. Richard is fundamentally a field- and specimen-based researcher, and currently co-leads fieldwork programmes focused on the Middle Jurassic ‘dark age’ of dinosaur evolution in England, Scotland, Morocco and Kyrgyzstan, with additional research collaborations in many other parts of the world.

Richard has been awarded >£3.5 million in research funding as PI and has published >190 research papers, including in Nature and Science. His research has significant impact through public engagement and heritage management, with his research on the ‘dinosaur highway’ and the Moroccan ‘punk rock dinosaur’ Spicomellus being some of the highest profile University stories of recent years. In 2019 he was awarded the Founders’ Award for Academic Excellence by the University of Birmingham and in 2023 he received the President’s Medal of the Palaeontological Association.

He is also an active contributor to Earth Sciences teaching at Birmingham, particularly as lead for the Palaeontology Field & Museum Skills module (within which he leads an international field course) and as supervisor of undergraduate research projects.

Richard supervises major/advanced projects and makes contributions to a number of other modules, including Palaeontology Field & Museum Skills.

• Systematics, taxonomy, and anatomy of fossil tetrapods, particularly dinosaurs
• Fieldwork in England, Scotland, Morocco and Kyrgyzstan, discovering new fossils to illuminate the Middle Jurassic ‘dark age’ of dinosaur evolution
• Terrestrial recovery from the Permo-Triassic mass extinction event
• Phanerozoic and Mesozoic diversification patterns among vertebrates, and fossil record quality
• Early evolution of the avian respiratory system, and lung ventilation among fossil archosaurs