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Dinosaur Detective
Thomas R. Holtz, Jr. co-author of James Gurney's The World of Dinosaurs |
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Dino Stats (tm) Name: Thomas R. Holtz, Jr., Ph.D. Age: 32 Legnth: " Weight: Favorite Food: Family: Married, two cats Genus: Vertebrate, Paleontologist, Department of Geology at the University of Maryland, College Park Place of Origin: Los Angeles, California, USA Residence: Maryland. Favorite Movie: Favorite TV Show: Babylon 5 Favorite Dinosaur:Tyrannosaurus Favorite Sport: Exercise: Running around campus between classes, libraries, and the office Hobbies: Science Fiction fandom: Distinguishing Features: Boyish smile
Vera Velociraptor's Very Vast, Verbose, Voracious Vocabulary O.C. Marsh - An important early dino digger who feuded with competing dino digger Cope. Students? Pay Attention! Be sure to check out that is to say, investigate, (humph), certain other useful pieces of terminology at the 6V-WOW Archives. |
 Thomas
R. Holtz, Jr. was born in Los Angeles, California, but lived outside
of Houston, Texas until he was ten. After being convinced by his parents
that he could not, under any circumstances, grow up to be a dinosaur, he
decided to do the next best thing -- study them! His first encounter with
real dinosaur skeltons was a trip to Dinosaur National Monument and other
Western museums when he was seven (and already convinced that a life dedicated
to vertebrate paleontology was his goal).
Holtz attended the Johns Hopkins University. His studies with Steve Stanley made him appreciate that there was more to paleontology than dinosaurs. Nonetheless, he was never convinced that there were more interesting things in paleontology than dinosaurs, and so, after graduation, he entered the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Yale University, right next to the Peabody Museum of Natural History, O.C. Marsh's old haunt. At Yale, he studied under Professor John Ostrom, who discovered the "raptor" Deinonychus and who was the the key figure in discovering the dinosaurian origin of birds. Holtz earned his Ph.D. in 1992 by studying the functional adaptations of tyrannosaur feet and revising the evolutionary history of theropods. After earning his doctorate, Holtz worked in a laboratory of the climate change program of the U.S. Geological Survey at Reston, Virginia. At that time, the Department of Geology at the University of Maryland,College Park, was searching for someone to teach a course on dinosaurs. He joined the department full-time in 1995, and he continues to teach two dinosaur courses, as wellas courses on invertebrate paleontology and historical and environmental geology. He currently lives in Maryland with his wife and two cats. from James
Gurney's The World of Dinosaurs, Greenwich Workshop Books, 1998, page
47
Photo above: Tom Holtz examines
specimens at the AMNH. (c)1997, 1998 Edward Summer, All Rights Reserved.
GurneyTopia - James Gurney's
The World of Dinosaurs
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