2011 ODSE
“Corpus Core”
Alan Detrich
Lawrence, KS
11th St. between Mass. and New Hampshire.
Alan Detrich, a native Kansan, is a sculptor and world-renowned paleontologist. Alan’s interest in geological history goes back to his boyhood days when he bought a fossil fish on a family trip to Wyoming. Over the years, Alan has discovered many rare dinosaur specimens. His most important discovery was a nearly complete Tyrannosaurus Rex found on private, deeded ground in South Dakota. His dinosaur discoveries have been placed in important collections all over the globe including the Museums of Natural History in Vienna, Austria; Belfast, Ireland; Seoul, Korea; The National Museum in Tokyo; and the University of Kansas. One of Dietrich’s finds, currently located at the University of Kansas Natural History Museum, is a rare fish within a fish fossil.
Alan was originally trained as a sculptor and specializes in bronze casting. He received a Master of Fine Arts from Wichita State University in 1974. In 2004, Alan returned to his passion for sculpture. “Corpus Core” is a column of fossil Xiphactinus vertebrae within a matrix of dinosaur bone fragments contained in an aluminum structure covered with photographic vinyl.