Richard M. Thomas is a forensic anthropologist in the Trace
Evidence Unit at the FBI Laboratory. He received his
Bachelor of Arts Degree in Anthropology from Northwestern
University in 1994. He attended graduate school at The
Pennsylvania State University, receiving his Master of Arts
Degree in Biological Anthropology in 1996 and his Ph.D. in
Biological Anthropology with a Genetics Minor in 2001.
From 2003-2010, he worked in the FBI Laboratory’s mitochondrial DNA Unit where his responsibilities included forensic anthropology casework and producing mitochondrial
DNA sequence data from unknown skeletal remains and family reference samples for the National Missing Persons DNA
Database. Since April 2010, he has worked in the Trace
Evidence Unit conducting forensic anthropology examinations and research. He is a Fellow of the Anthropology section of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and a Diplomate of the American Board of Forensic Anthropology. He also served as an FBI representative on the Scientific Working
Group for Forensic Anthropology from 2008-2014 and is currently serving on the Anthropology Subcommittee of the
National Institute of Standards and Technology’s
Organization of Scientific Area Committees (OSAC) for the forensic sciences.