Michael Phillip Richards (FSA, FRSC) is an archaeological scientist, researcher and an academic. He is an archaeology Professor at Simon Fraser University and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Archaeological Science, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (London) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Richards has published more than 300 research articles (including in journals such as Nature, Science, and PNAS). His research focuses on studying the diets diet evolution and migrations of past humans and animals using various techniques such as isotope analysis and radiocarbon dating. His work is highly cited and has gathered media coverage. Education Richards completed his Bachelor of Arts (with Honours) and received his Certificate in Liberal Arts from Simon Fraser University in 1992. He completed his master's degree in 1994 from the same institution before moving to U.K. for his doctoral studies. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Oxford in 1998. Career Right after his doctoral studies, he accepted a position as postdoctoral research assistant at the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art at Oxford University. From 2000 till 2005, Richards was associated with University of Bradford, funded through a Wellcome Trust University Award, first as a lecturer, and was later promoted to reader and then professor. In 2004 he joined the newly founded Department of Human Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) in Leipzig, Germany as a Professor (W2) until 2009. During that time he also held a part-time professorship in archaeology at the University of Durham (UK). In 2009, Richards moved to the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia (UBC), and held a part-time professorship at the MPI-EVA. Richards was associate dean for research and graduate studies in the Faculty of Arts at UBC from 2012 to 2016. He then moved to the Department of Archaeology at Simon Fraser University as a professor and Canada Research Chair in Archaeological Science (Tier 1) in 2016. Research and work Richard’s major research areas include bioarcheology, stable isotopes, and archaeological science. He has worked studying the diet evolution of humans in the past, focusing especially on early modern humans and Neanderthals. He published his first article in 2000 about Neanderthal diets using stable isotopes, followed by a number of papers, including a review paper in 2008 in PNAS. The isotope analysis characterized Neanderthals as true carnivores and the results