lifestyles
CURATOR FAMOUS FOR FOSSILS
Larry Martin, a curator at the Natural History Museum,makes no bones about his work.
Lisa Perry / KANSAN
Larry Martin, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Natural History Museum, displays some of the fossils he is researching. Martin travels as far away as China to conduct his research.
By Luisa Flores Kansan staff writer
D digging up fossils, reading books, looking through microscopes — these are part of Larry Martin's work. Martin is curator of vertebrate paleontology at KU's Natural History
Museum. He spends most of his time doing research in his office on the third floor of the museum, surrounded by thousands of bones and books.
Martin travels around the world presenting the results of his research. And when he is not traveling around the world, the world travels to KU to check on what he is doing.
Last summer, for example, a Japanese television crew came to film the world's first three-dimensional model of a archaeopteryx skeleton, which Martin built.
His theories on this primitive bird of the Jurassic period represent a new and revolutionary contribution to the international scientific community.
"Somebody,some-
the museum."
Martin's most recent work is "Paleopathology. Disease in the Fossil Record," written with Bruce M. Rothschild. It was done as a project with the University of California in Los Angeles, where DNA tests were done to fossil bones that Martin and Rothschild were studying.
Martin will travel to China this summer for a conference about fossils of Jurassic birds found there, the only fossils of their kind found out of Germany. He also will travel to
where, in this pile of stuff, is going to get a Nobel Prize," he said, half-joking. "I don't think I'm going to get a Nobel Prize, but some-where, there is one."
" (Martin) is a very brilliant paleontologist who has made extraordinary discoveries in his
Philip Humphrey, director of the Natural History Museum, said that Martin was a respected researcher.
ny. He also will travel to
"He is a very brilliant paleontologist who has made extraordinary discoveries in his field," Humphrey said. "He is also an outstanding teacher and a deeply respected colleague at
Philip Humphrey
Director of the Natural History
Museum
Wyoming to dig fossils during the summer.
Martin also is a professor of biological sciences. In his classroom, students are surrounded by jaws, skulls, teeth and more.
The classroom has skeletons of primitive and
the associations of primitive and modern animals, as well as a specimen of a whip scorpion that lives in a transparent, plastic box. In this lab-like environment, Martin teaches systematics and ecology, comparative anatomy, higher vertebrate paleontology and the evolution of vertebrate communities.
Born on a farm in Nebraska, Martin remembers how he collected rocks.
when he was 8 or 9 years old. He built his first chemistry laboratory in the basement of his parents' house during high school. He was an honor roll student, a football player and a tuba player.
In 1963, Martin won a scholarship to the University of Nebraska, where he began studying chemistry. His interest in fossils made him change his mind, and he began taking courses in geology and paleontology.
When Martin was a junior, he saw his first
large fossil, a bone from a plesiosaurus.
"It has the second largest animal neck in the world," he said of the fossil, his face expressing almost childlike enthusiasm.
After getting a master's degree in geology, he came to Kansas, attracted by its abundance of fossils and the excellent reputation of the paleontology program at KU. Martin completed a Ph.D. in paleontology at KU. His current area of interest is cyclical climate in the past and its relationship to animal extinction.
He has published some papers recently about his research on Cenozoic climate, a time in which the world was covered by tropical forest
"This is the coldest the world has been in 360 million years. Why was it warmer in the past? Is it carbon dioxide? If it is not carbon dioxide, it means that there is something else that can change our climate very effectively. The only way to find out to is study the fossil record. I think that will be one of the scientific discoveries of the 20th century, if we get there before the 20th century is over."
"The most important research I do has to do with climates in the past, because the most important thing we learn from fossil records is that the world has changed from the way it is now," Martin said. "In fact, the period in which we are living right now is one of the most unique periods in history. It is unique because it is cold."
Martin, his wife, Jean, and their two daughters live in West Lawrence with their two dogs and one cat. His hobby is collecting Victorian furniture. He enjoys science fiction, especially about dinosaurs. Martin liked the movie "Jurassic Park," but said that paris were incorrect.
"Remember that a velocitorator's brain has half the size of the brain of an opossum," he says, referring to the portrayal of them as vicious and cunning predators.
"If you think that an opossum is smart, you think that a velociraptor is smart," he said, laughing.
Dancers to open cultural window
By Lula Flores
Kansan staff writer
a traditional folk Paraguayan party will be celebrated at the University of Kansas, and the guests are going to kick around a ball of fire.
The dance company is visiting KU through Thursday. It will be performing tonight at 6:30 and 8:30 at the Sherbon Dance Theatre, room 240 Robinson Center. Tickets will be sold at the door and are $2.50 for students and $5 for the public.
The party is part of the dances that the Rohayha Dance Company will perform at KU. The ball, which in a real-life party would be set on fire and thrown to the public, won't be in flames this time.
The company's headquarters is in Encarnación, Paraguay, and their goal is to showcase Paraguayan folk dance throughout the world.
The presentation is sponsored by KU's Department of Music and Dance, the International Performing Arts Committee and International Theatre Studies Center.
Daniel Luzko, Encarnacion graduate student and one of the organizz-
Andrew Tsubaki, director of the international theatre department, said that although its budget was limited, the group encouraged bringing international groups to KU. Members of the Rohayhu Dance Company are students or former students of the Dana Studio Ballet, led by Dana Luzko, a former KU dance student. The company is comprised of girls from age 9 to 25; a male dancer, Cristian Francisco Jimenez of Chile; and two pianists.
ers, said that because of a pact called "Compañeros de las Americas," Paraguay was Kansas' sister nation. He said that because of this relationship, much information and culture had been exchanged between KU and Paraguay.
"I like to see multiculturalism happen among us, to learn about it and to feel about it, so this is an eloquent way to show it, and people in Lawrence are open to it because of the international community at KU," Tsubaki said. "We are opening a little window for each one."
The term rohayahu means love in the Guurany Indian language. Paraguayan music and dance blend elements from the European culture
The Rohayhu dance program has five features, featuring folk and contemporary dance. They are: "San Juan Ara," "Caracole," "Danzas de mi Tierra," "Fantasias Paraguayas" and "Cáelo Americano." Each includes several different dances.
with the Guarany Indian culture.
"The dancers are barefoot and walk over burning coals, and just the real believers don't get their feet burned," Dana Luzko said.
Many of them represent Paraguayan beliefs and traditions.
"We dance with bottles, clay pots and bread baskets called chiperas on our heads representing a traditional celebration that we have every year in Paraguay," said Carolina Segovia, 16, who is one of the dancers.
Another dance represents the everyday activities of the people living in the Paraguayan country side.
The performance not only gives Lawrence and KU an opportunity to experience another culture, but it also teaches the members of the company more about the United States, Dana Luzko said.
"This is an eloquent way to show multiculturalism, and people in Lawrence are open to it because of the international community at
KU."
Andrew Taubold Director of the international theatre department
Lead story
A January Reuters news service story on the Japanese physical comedy team, Tokyo Shock Boys, listed several grotesque injuries suffered by team members' aiming for laughs; scarring of groins and buttocks from dropping firecrackers down their pants; tender skin, in patches, resulting from gluing various objects to their faces; and missing teeth by one member caused by bites of scorpions he puts in his mouth. One member, Danna Koyanagi, takes milk into his mouth and squirts it out his eyes. The group's advertising slogan is, "Please laugh. We're risking our lives."
Oops!
Halfdan Prahl, 35, was arrested in Westport, Conn., in February when he frightened patrons by bringing a chain saw into a restaurant and carving his initials into the floor
or the Bark Axe-ward, Prahl said he knew the owner and was certain the owner found his stunt amusing. However, according to the police, Prahl was
unaware that his friend had recently sold the restaurant to another man.
In October in Davenport, Iowa, middle-school Spanish teacher Patricia Lewis was smacked in the head with a baseball bat by a blindfolded seventh-grader in a classroom pitbat accident.
Newton, Mass., Fire Chief Edward Murphy told reporters in November that he and other firefighters and police officers spent 15 minutes helping free a woman whose long fingernail had become wedged into the coin slot of a parking meter.
Grown-up
■ New York City police officer Angelo Angelico Jr., 27, was shot by a colleague in October when he drove his car up a walkway and failed to heed other officers' warning to stop. As he emerged from his car, officers said, he was holding his. 367 Magnum. His last statement before being shot was that he didn't need to stop because "My gun's bigger than yours."
In August, nurse Bobbie Heaney filed a lawsuit against Dr. William Mcntosh after an incident in a hospital delivery room in Odessa, Texas. Heaney accused Mcntosh of deliberately squirting her in the face with blood from an umbilical cord during an argument.
Recent use of biting by teachers for disciplinary purposes: In November a private-school teacher in Longueuil, Quebec, was charged with biting a 4-year-old boy on the arm; Montgomery, Ala., high-school coach Ed Donahoo resigned last summer after biting a 15-year-old boy on the nose during physical education glass.
Child prodigies
In October, 8-year-old Michael Jones, of Lawrenceville, Ga., arrived at Dr. Robert Zaworski's office for outpatient surgery on a facial mole but was clutching his handwritten last will and testament. Had the surgery been unsuccessful, Mom would have gotten his bed and Dad his picture and toys, and Tedy would have been buried with Michael.
Among recent child criminal phenoms: a boy, age 10, turned in by his 9-year-old brother after allegedly robbing a convenience store in Grand Junction, Colo., last summer; and a boy, age 11, arrested in Sandersville, Ga., in January, for robbing a bank with a .38-caliber pistol and making his getaway on a bicycle.