Larry Martin

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Larry Dean Martin (born December 8, 1943 in Bartlett (Nebraska) , † March 9, 2013 ) was an American vertebrate paleontologist who dealt in particular with birds and mammals.

Martin graduated from the University of Nebraska with a bachelor's degree in 1966 and a master's degree in 1969 and received his PhD in biology from the University of Kansas in 1973 . From 1972 he was curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Natural History Museum of the University of Kansas and at the same time assistant professor and later professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the university. He was there at the Biodiversity Institute.

For example, he examined fossils of saber-toothed cats , evidence of diseases in fossils (e.g. tuberculosis in 17,000-year-old bison fossils), rodents and birds from the Pleistocene and Neogene of North America, mosasaurs , the Cretaceous seabirds Hesperornis and Ichthyornis and the connection between extinction of Vertebrates and climate change specifically in North America over the past 30 million years.

Like Alan Feduccia, he was one of the proponents of an ancestry for birds not from dinosaurs but from archosaurs , and for a long time he also advocated a relationship with crocodiles. He also took the view that maniraptors (like the very bird-like Caudipteryx ) were not dinosaurs at all, but should be assigned to birds.

He also tried to revive the group of Sauriurae introduced by Ernst Haeckel for bird ancestors such as Archeopteryx (with a long tail in contrast to today's birds with pygostyle , Haeckel: Ornithurae). But that didn't catch on.

From 1986 he was a member of the US working group on the Quaternary border.

He has been married since 1967 and has two daughters.

Fonts

  • with Bruce M. Rothschild: Paleopathology: disease in the fossil record , Boca Raton: CRC Press 1993
  • The relationship of Archeopteryx to other Birds , in The Beginnings of Birds , (Archeopteryx Conference Eichstätt 1984), 1985
  • The Evolution and Early Radiation of Birds , in Perspectives in Ornithology. Essays presented for the cenennial of the American Ornithologists Union , 1983, pp. 291-353
  • The origin of birds and of avian flight , Current Ornithology, 1, 1983, pp. 105-129
  • with B. Miles Gilbert, Howard G. Savage Avian Osteology , Laramie / Wyoming 1981
  • Editor with Virginia Naples, John Barbiaz: The other saber-tooths: scimitar-tooth cats of the Western Hemisphere , The Johns Hopkins University Press 2011

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life data according to American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004
  2. ^ Larry D. Martin: A basal archosaurian origin for birds . In: Acta Zoologica Sinica. 6, No. 50, 2004, pp. 978-990.
personal data
SURNAME Martin, Larry
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Martin, Larry Dean
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American paleontologist
DATE OF BIRTH December 8, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Bartlett, Nebraska
DATE OF DEATH March 9, 2013