Yevgeny Nikolayevich Kurochkin

Evgeni Nikolajewitsch Kurotschkin , Russian Евгений Николаевич Курочкин , English transcription Evgeny Kurochkin, (* July 12, 1940 in Moscow ; † December 13, 2011 ibid.) Was a Russian vertebrate paleontologist and ornithologist who is considered one of the world's leading experts in palaeornithology . He was at the Paleontological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.

Its first publication came about in the early 1960s after a six-month stay in the North Pacific and in Murmansk about seabirds there. He was a student of the Russian ornithologist Georgi Petrowitsch Dementjew (Dementev, 1898–1969), who brought him to paleornithology, as there was still a great need for research. In 1964 he graduated from Lomonosov University with a degree in biology and in 1968 he received his PhD (candidate title) on the functional morphology of the pool of swimming and diving birds. In 1994 he received the Russian doctorate ( habilitation ) with a thesis that summarized his research on the origin of birds.

Among other things, he dealt with Mesozoic birds from Mongolia (e.g. Ambiortus dementjevi 1982, Teviornis 2002) and Siberia (e.g. Mystiornis 2011). In addition to the Soviet Union and Mongolia, he did field work in Cuba and Vietnam. He is known for the sensational discovery of one of the oldest birds of the modern type (with the typical tail shape of modern birds and tail feathers), the crow-sized Ambiortus, 1982 in the Lower Cretaceous Mongolia (around 125 million years old). He showed that only around twenty million years after Archeopteryx, birds had very modern features. He speaks out against an ancestry of birds from dinosaurs and instead in favor of an ancestry from archosaurs and parallel development with dinosaurs. Archeopteryx, on the other hand, is, according to Kurochkin, a sideline of the theropods, which, however, could not compete with the actual birds and died out, just like the also extinct enantiornithes . He was also one of the few prominent supporters of Sankar Chatterjee's Protoavis .

He also advocates the origin of geese (Anseriformes) in chalk.

He was president of the Menzbier Ornithological Society and an honorary member of the American Ornithologists' Union .

Fonts

• with MJ Benton, MA Shishkin, DM Unwin (eds.): The Age of Dinosaurs in Russia and Mongolia. Cambridge University Press 2000
• The origin of birds (PDF; 1.1 MB), Science in Russia 2009, No. 2
• Article Lappentaucher (Podicipediformes) and Rallen (Rallidae) in birds of the USSR (Russian), Moscow / Leningrad, Nauka, 1982, 1987 (German translation: Handbook of birds of the Soviet Union, Ziemsen Verlag, Wittenberg, 1985, 1989)
• Birds of Central Asia in the Pliocene (Russian), Treatises of the Joint Mongolian-Soviet Expedition, Volume 26, 1985, pp. 1-120
• with IA Bogdanovich: Origin of feathered flight, Paleontological Journal, 44, 2010, pp. 1570–1588.
• with GJ Dyke: The first fossil owls (Aves: Strigiformes) from the Paleogene of Asia and a review of the fossil record of Strigiformes , Paleontological Journal, 45, 2011, 445–458
• Synopsis of Mesozoic birds and early evolution of class aves, Archeopteryx, Volume 13, 1995, 47-66.
• Parallel evolution of theropod dinosaurs and birds, Entomological Review, Volume 86, 2006, Suppl. 1, S45-S58.

Web links

• Photo and list of publications in the Cabinet of Paleoornithology
• Obituary, Russian, pdf

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Fossils other than the early Jurassic and Triassic on bird ancestors are missing, except for footprints
2. ↑ Evo Wiki ( Memento of the original from May 26, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ Named after Michail Alexandrowitsch Menzbier (1855–1935)