Herculano Marcos Ferraz de Alvarenga

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Herculano Marcos Ferraz de Alvarenga
BornHerculano Marcos Ferraz de Alvarenga
(1947-11-07) November 7, 1947 (age 70)
Taubaté, Brazil
Residence Brazil
Nationality Brazilian
Alma mater Universidade de Taubaté
Scientific career
Fields Paleontology, Medicine
Institutions Taubaté Natural History Museum
Doctoral advisor Elizabeth Hofling
Author abbrev. (zoology) Alvarenga

Herculano Marcos Ferraz de Alvarenga (born 7 November 1947) is a Brazilian ornithologist, paleontologist and physician, founder of the Taubaté Natural History Museum. [1] [2]

Life

Herculano Alvarenga was born in 1947 in Taubaté, São Paulo, Brazil. As a teenager, he started to watch birds and collect them. He went to São Paulo when he was 15 to study taxidermy and soon his stuffed specimens started to be exhibited in scientific expositions in high school. [3]

Taubaté Place in Southeast, Brazil

Taubaté is a medium-sized city in the State of São Paulo, in southeastern Brazil.

São Paulo (state) State of Brazil

São Paulo is one of the 26 states of the Federative Republic of Brazil and is named after Saint Paul of Tarsus. As the richest Brazilian state and a major industrial complex, often dubbed the "locomotive of Brazil", the state is responsible for 33.9% of the Brazilian GDP. São Paulo also has the second highest Human Development Index (HDI) and GDP per capita, the fourth lowest infant mortality rate, the third highest life expectancy, and the third lowest rate of illiteracy among the federative units of Brazil, being by far, the safest state in the country. The homicide rate is 3.8 per 100 thousand as of 2018, almost 1/4 of the Brazilian rate. São Paulo alone is richer than Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia combined. If São Paulo were an independent country, its nominal GDP would be ranked among the top 20 in the world. The economy of São Paulo State is the most developed in Brazil.

Brazil Federal republic in South America

Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At 8.5 million square kilometers and with over 208 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area and the fifth most populous. Its capital is Brasília, and its most populated city is São Paulo. The federation is composed of the union of the 26 states, the Federal District, and the 5,570 municipalities. It is the largest country to have Portuguese as an official language and the only one in the Americas; it is also one of the most multicultural and ethnically diverse nations, due to over a century of mass immigration from around the world.

His interests in biology and anatomy led him to study medicine, specializing in orthopedy. In 1975 he returned to Taubaté and became professor of the Faculty of Medicine in the city. When the faculty went on strike in 1977, he started to look for fossils, which led him to discover the first fossil of Paraphysornis brasiliensis . [3]

Biology is the natural science that studies life and living organisms, including their physical structure, chemical processes, molecular interactions, physiological mechanisms, development and evolution. Despite the complexity of the science, there are certain unifying concepts that consolidate it into a single, coherent field. Biology recognizes the cell as the basic unit of life, genes as the basic unit of heredity, and evolution as the engine that propels the creation and extinction of species. Living organisms are open systems that survive by transforming energy and decreasing their local entropy to maintain a stable and vital condition defined as homeostasis.

Anatomy The study of the structure of organisms and their parts

Anatomy is the branch of biology concerned with the study of the structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science which deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old science, having its beginnings in prehistoric times. Anatomy is inherently tied to developmental biology, embryology, comparative anatomy, evolutionary biology, and phylogeny, as these are the processes by which anatomy is generated over immediate (embryology) and long (evolution) timescales. Anatomy and physiology, which study (respectively) the structure and function of organisms and their parts, make a natural pair of related disciplines, and they are often studied together. Human anatomy is one of the essential basic sciences that are applied in medicine.

Medicine The science and practice of the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of physical and mental illnesses

Medicine is the science and practice of establishing the diagnosis, prognosis, treatment, and prevention of disease. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness. Contemporary medicine applies biomedical sciences, biomedical research, genetics, and medical technology to diagnose, treat, and prevent injury and disease, typically through pharmaceuticals or surgery, but also through therapies as diverse as psychotherapy, external splints and traction, medical devices, biologics, and ionizing radiation, amongst others.

After the description of Paraphysornis brasiliensis was published in 1982, [4] the fossil gained high notoriety in the scientific community. Many museums worldwide asked for replicas of the fossil, trading it for replicas of other famous fossils. [3] Soon Alvarenga had a rich collection of replicas and some actual fossils, as well as several stuffed animals. As a result, he founded in 2000 the Fundação de Apoio à Ciência e Natureza (Foundation for the Support of Science and Nature), which led to the opening of the Taubaté Natural History Museum in 2004. [2] Currently, Alvarenga is the leading paleornithologist in Brazil, having described various fossil species, including taxa from the Paleocene (Itaboraí, Rio de Janeiro) such as Diogenornis and Paleopsilopterus , Oligocene/Miocene (Taubaté basin, São Paulo) such as Paraphysornis and Hoazinavis , and Pleistocene (Bahia and Minas Gerais), such as Pleistovultur and Wingegyps , in collaboration with a number of scientists. [5] [6] [7] [8]

The Paleocene or Palaeocene, the "old recent", is a geological epoch that lasted from about 66 to 56 million years ago. It is the first epoch of the Paleogene Period in the modern Cenozoic Era. As with many geologic periods, the strata that define the epoch's beginning and end are well identified, but the exact ages remain uncertain.

Itaboraí Municipality in Southeast, Brazil

Itaboraí is a city in the state of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, that belongs to the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan area. It was founded in 1672. In 2006, it had a population of 220,981.

Rio de Janeiro (state) State of Brazil

Rio de Janeiro is one of the 27 federative units of Brazil. It has the second largest economy of Brazil, with the largest being that of the state of São Paulo.

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Taubacrex is an extinct genus of birds of the Quercymegapodiidae family from the Late Oligocene to Early Miocene (Deseadan) Tremembé Formation of the Taubaté Basin in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. The type species is Taubacrex granivora. In the original description, Herculano Alvarenga classified it as a member of Rallidae family. It provides the earliest fossil record of gastroliths in birds of the order Galliformes.

Collection of fossils in the National Museum of Brazil

The National Museum of Brazil collections included an exhibition of fossils.

<i>Gioventù</i> 1898 painting by Eliseu Visconti

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References

  1. ↑ Alvarenga, H. (2004) Tucanos das Américas/Toucans of the Americas. M. Pontual Ed.: 120pp.
  2. 1 2 Museu de História Natural de Taubaté. (Undated) Histórico. Retrieved 30 January 2017.
  3. 1 2 3 Moon, P. (2012). "Herculano Alvarenga descobriu fósseis e hoje dirige seu próprio museu de história natural." Época. Retrieved 4 February 2017.
  4. ↑ Alvarenga, H. M. F. (1982). "Uma gigantesca ave fóssil do cenozóico brasileiro: Physornis brasiliensis sp. n.". Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências. 54 (4): 697–712.
  5. ↑ Alvarenga, H. F. (1997) Aves Fósseis: História da Origem e Evolução. In: Sick, H. (1997) Ornitologia Brasileira. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Nova Fronteira.
  6. ↑ Alvarenga, H. M. F.; Olson, S. L. (2004) A new genus of tiny condor from the Pleistocene of Brazil (Aves: Vulturidae). Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington 117 (1): 1-9.
  7. ↑ Alvarenga, H.; Brito, G. R. R.; Migotto, R.; Hubbe, A.; Höfling, E. (2008) Pleistovultur nevesi gen. et sp. nov. (Aves: Vulturidae) and the diversity of condors and vultures in the South American Pleistocene. Ameghiniana 45 (3): 613-618.
  8. ↑ Mayr, G.; Alvarenga, H.; Mourer-Chauviré, C. (2011) Out of Africa: Fossils shed light on the origin of the hoatzin, an iconic Neotropic bird". Naturwissenschaften 98 (11): 961–966.
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