Herculano Marcos Ferraz de Alvarenga

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Herculano Marcos Ferraz de Alvarenga (born November 7, 1947 in Taubaté ) is a Brazilian doctor, ornithologist and paleontologist who specializes in extinct birds and is a specialist in birds of terror . He is often quoted simply as Herculano Alvarenga or Herculano MF Alvarenga .

education

Alvarenga observed and groomed birds as a teenager. He graduated from the Faculty of Medicine in Taubaté in 1973 as a medical doctor and specialized in orthopedics , occupational medicine and traumatology . He worked in Sao Paulo for many years before going back to Taubaté to become a professor.

Own museum

He is the founder and director of the Museum of Natural History in Taubaté, which mainly consists of his own collection , which he donated in 2002 (around 1500 specimens of 500 extinct species, mainly from the state of Sao Paulo).

Discoveries

The Paraphysornis brasiliensis first described by Alvarenga

In 1982 he first described his find of the 2.2 m high, 200 kg heavy, 23 million years ago living terror bird Paraphysornis brasiliensis . He found it in 1977 (when he had a lot of free time during a strike at his university) near Tremembé (near his hometown Taubatée) in a clay pit, the remains of an old lake in which fossils of insects and small fish had previously been found. The skeleton is the most complete skeleton of a terror bird (the preparation took two years) and is on display in his museum, but he made replicas for many other museums in exchange for replicas of dinosaurs and other extinct animals for his museum. He received a replica of an Estauricosaurus ( Staurikosaurus pricei ) from Rio , a Tyrannosaurus skull replica from Los Angeles , an Archeopteryx replica from London , gorilla skeletons and those of the Komodo dragon from Seattle, and a replica of an elephant bird from Tokyo Madagascar and from other moa and dodo replicas.

Researches

With José Fernando Bonaparte he first described the Cretaceous ratite Patagopteryx (1992). He also looked at extinct and recent macaws (such as turquoise macaw , Lear's macaw ). He also described the first finds of fossil warrior birds , put forward the thesis with Gerald Mayr that the Hoatzin had come to Brazil with flotsam from Africa, and undertook a revision of the system of terror birds with Elizabeth Höfling.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ The oldest Triassic dinosaur found in Brazil
  2. ^ Alvarenga, Courtier Systematic revision of the Phorusrhacidae (Aves: Ralliformes) . Papéis Avulsos de Zoologia 43, 2003, pp. 51-91
personal data
SURNAME Alvarenga, Herculano Marcos Ferraz de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Alvarenga, Herculano
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Brazilian paleontologist
DATE OF BIRTH November 7, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Taubate