Éric Buffetaut (born 19 November 1950) is a French paleontologist, author and researcher at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique since 1976 where he is a Doctor of Science and Director of Research.
Buffetaut is a specialist of fossil archosaurs, mainly dinosaurs and pterosaurs, and has published many books on paleontology.
He is one of the major paleontologists to support the thesis of the fall of a meteorite as the main cause of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.