Larry Martin

From EvoWiki

Larry Martin, Professor at the University of Kansas, is one the leading lights of the "thecodont" origin of birds hypothesis, along with Alan Feduccia. For a time Martin was the most vocal advocate of the crocodile/bird nexus first advocated by Alick Walker in the 1970s, a view he has consistently supported until recently, largely via studies of the otic region and dentition of these two groups. His large body of work on avian phylogeny includes superlative reviews of Hesperornithiformes and Ichthyornithiformes, as well as a formidable amount of dubious work on avian origins and the urvogel, including a radical and largely speculative restoration of urvogel osteology. Errors notwithstanding, Martin is largely credited with prompting serious study of Mesozoic avifauna in the latter half of the 20th Century, and unified the assemblage of Cretaceous Enantiornithes into a singular holophyletic clade. Martin has also resurrected Haeckel's taxon Sauriurae, to encompass all non-ornithurine archaic birds (Martin 1987).

JGK