This is Mazon Monday post #154. What's your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:[email protected].
In honor of Pit 11 Opening Day on March 1st, here is a historical article from the Lizzadro Museum's newsletter in 2006. There's an advertisement of the Mazon Creek Open House held on November 11th, 2006. The article is titled "Collecting Mazon Creek Fossils At Pit 11: Amateur Perspective". It was written by Andrew Hay and Samuel Kruty... both were long time collectors.
COLLECTING MAZON CREEK FOSSILS AT PIT 11:
Amateur Perspective By Andrew A. Hay and Samuel Kruty
Prior to the early 1950's, Mazon Creek fossils were collected from river bank outcrops and shaft and small strip mine spoil heaps and were mainly plants, plant fragments, and rarely insects. When Pit 11 was opened, the work swiftly spread among amateur collectors that "Peabody" was generously allowing concretion collectors to hunt on the spoil piles of the active strip mine.
At Pit 11, the concretions were in general found to be smaller than those collected elsewhere. There were a great number of "duds" that is, concretions that, after being hammered open, revealed nothing visible on the opened surface. Hay remembers hearing some of the first collectors of Pit 11 fossils recount their initial disappointment. Expecting large, well-preserved plants, they found unrecognizable or indistinct shapes that came to be known as "blobs." Most were thrown away. Years later these peculiar shapes were identified as fossil jellyfish! Shrimp, worms, fish, and occasional insects were the prizes to be found here. Enterprising souls brought their finds to the Field Museum, where they came to the attention of Dr. Richardson.
During the workweek, collectors entered the mine? office or lab to ask for permission and to sign a release Melbourne McKee, the mine chemist, was a great source of advice to amateurs and scientists alike On Sundays, collectors went to the mine machine ship, winding their way between the giant machine tools and even larger pieces of mining equipment being repaired there, searching for the foreman. Permission was granted after the foreman glanced at those in the party "Stay out of the way of the trucks! Don't park on the roads! Don't go into the working face! Good Luck!" With these admonitions collectors were off to take a look into the trench where the mine shovel was stripping 50 to 100 feet of sand, shale, and soil overburden off the coal. Underfoot the earth shook, arousing awe and admiration at the immense power of the machine. A few more bites and the podlike feet swung down to inch the shovel forward as if it were a mechanism in a science fiction thriller. Then the shovel, and in later years the "wheel," piled the stripped overburden in long hills adjacent to the open trench.
After parking their vehicles on the shoulder of the mine roads, collectors were up and over the 40 to 50 foot high spoil banks to climb and search the sides of the hills for concretions. It was soon learned that specific animals were to be found in the distinct locations, not scattered equally over the entire area. Some hills bore numerous discoid concretions - those unwanted blobs. On other hills collectors might be more apt to find concentrations of shrimp, or chitons, or clams, or rarely Tully Monsters. Locations of favorite collecting areas were guarded with the paranoia of fishermen trying to keep the best fishing hole a secret. Hay once questioned Francis Tully as to where he found his best specimens. "I collect them from all over Pit 11," he responded cagily. In another instance, Hay attempted to follow a stooped, frail-looking collector who was noted for his collection of rare shrimp. Sensing a competitor, the shrimp collector was up, over, and down the nearest hill, disappearing into a several square mile wilderness of steep gullies, lakes, and hills. Secrecy was not the only challenge collectors faced. Summer meant pesky deer flies. And one has to experience the thrill of struggling up a steep hill, arriving at the summit, and finding oneself staring into the eyes of a four foot long blue racer snakes. If it had rained recently, what had been silt from the Coal Age river would turn into a sticky mud that entrapped cars and the occasional group-rented bus. More than one collector found the mud a veritable quicksand into which it was easy to sink up to the waist. Smart collectors learned to get out of the mine if a thunderstorm threatened.
Holotypes of new species turned up every now and then, even as the private collections of the serious collectors began to grow. Dr. Eugene Stanley Richardson, Jr. (Gene to the collectors), realized that if a complete history and the paleoecology of the area were to be developed, a rapport with amateur as well as professional collectors would be very important. He realized that the possessive and cautious nature of many collectors could lead them to suppress their finds, so he gently coaxed them into sharing information and fossils. Gene Richardson had the capacity to make the questioning non-professional feel accepted and worthy of attention, of making basic inquiry welcomed. The strength of the bond established between Gene Richardson and the collectors cannot be overstated.
No university, museum, or research group could boast of an array of field assistants such as Gene had mustered. They were out in all weather, climbing, digging, hoping for "the big one" - something rare to bring in to him. Gene usually found time to look over what was presented for his inspection. Published papers gave credit to the finders of newly described creatures. Sometimes the discoverer's name was latinized to grace for all time a new genus or species - fuel enough to fire up any collector. Like Linnaeus, scientists Johnson, Richardson, Schram, and others had fun naming specimens like the eight-armed jellyfish Octomedusa pieckorum (after Helen and Ted Piecko). Smithixerxes juliarum was named for Julia Smith, the six-year-old who found this tiny, rare shrimp. More than 70 Mazon Creek species were named after collectors. ESCONI, the Earth Science Club of Northern Illinois was immortalized through Esconites zelus. A favorite is Escumasia roryi, named after E. Scumas Rory, the author of The Dancing Worm of Turkana. Rory (actually E.S. Richardson) told the story of an elaborate hoax perpetrated by Bryan Patterson about a living Tully Monster.
An annual open house at the Field Museum became the forum for this amateur-professional exchange, with many collectors vying for Gene's attention. Many "oohs" and "aahs" could be heard coming from those gathered around the binocular microscope and attached Polaroid camera fallowing the collector to go home with remenibrance should he decide to give up his find. Samuel Kruty's youngest son, Peter showed Gene a cockroach he had found at Benson's Farm the beam- ing 11 year old face unforgettable as he decided to donate the rare fossil to the museum upon seeing Gene's response.
About 20 years ago, Peabody sold Pit 11 to Commonwealth Edison Company for the construction of a nuclear power-generating station. Some collecting areas were lost. However, the area around the reactor cooling pond was leased to the State of Illinois to serve as a conservation area for fishing and fossil collecting. Rules have changed, and collecting has gotten harder as vegetation has slowly reclaimed the once actively eroding spoil heaps. This has not stopped the collectors, however, and periodically, wondrous things are brought back from Pit 11 to the open house now sponsored by Northeastern Illinois University.
This article was excerpted from Richardson's Guide to The Fossil Fauna of Mazon Creek c.1997, edited by Charles Shabica and Andrew Hay and reprinted with permission from Northeastern Illinois University. Andy Hay donated much of his time to the Lizzadro Museum as a tour guide on collecting trips and educator for fossil programs. He passed away in November 2003.
The Museum has been taking field trips to Pit ll for the last 8 years. Every year fossils get harder to find with vegetation growing up and less overturned soil. However every year at least a couple of people in our group find exceptional fossils. The area is managed by the State of Illinois Mazonia Braidwood Fish and Wildlife Area. It is open to fossil collectors March 1 through October 1. Center illustration of a Tully Monster courtesy Northeastern Illinois University.
