Thomas R. Holtz Jr.
American paleontologist
Thomas Richard Holtz Jr. (born September 13, 1965) is an American vertebrate palaeontologist, author, and principal lecturer at the University of Maryland's Department of Geology. He has published extensively on the phylogeny, morphology, ecomorphology, and locomotion of terrestrial predators, especially on tyrannosaurids and other theropod dinosaurs. He wrote the book Dinosaurs and is the author or co-author of the chapters "Saurischia", "Basal Tetanurae", and "Tyrannosauroidea" in the second edition of The Dinosauria. He has also been consulted as a scientific advisor for the Walking with Dinosaurs BBC series as well as the Discovery special When Dinosaurs Roamed America, and has appeared in numerous documentaries focused on prehistoric life, such as Jurassic Fight Club on History and Monsters Resurrected, Dinosaur Revolution and Clash of the Dinosaurs on Discovery.
Holtz is also the director of the Science and Global Change Program within the College Park Scholars living-learning community at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Early life
Holtz was born in California. He has stated that he wanted to be a dinosaur as a child, but upon learning that it is impossible to turn into a dinosaur he shifted his goals to study them. He attended Johns Hopkins University, where he met his future wife. He then attended Yale, where he met John Ostrom, who served as his academic advisor.
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