This is the "Fossil Friday" post #162. Expect this to be a somewhat regular feature of the website. We will post any fossil pictures you send in to [email protected]. Please include a short description or story. Check the #FossilFriday Twitter hash tag for contributions from around the world!
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For this week, we have a fossil specimen from long time ESCONI member Jim Alann, who has shared quite a few fossils with us in the past, including a spider (Arthrolycola), a Helen Asher jelly, and a eurypterid. Now, he's back with another very nice historically significant piece.
J.C. Carr was a banker, actually president of the Grundy County National Bank, in Morris, IL in the late 1800's. He was a prolific collector, who both sold and gave away many Mazon Creek fossils during his lifetime. His collection currently resides at the University of Illinois Prairie Research Institute (PRI).
His favorite localities were the upper and lower fossil beds on the Mazon River. Here is a photo of him hunting the river for fossils around 1900.
The "Upper Beds." The stream bed is filled with glacial bowlders, which form an excellent base on which to crack the nodules." Mr. J. C. Carr looking for nodules in the creek bed. He usually carries a basket and fills this, then sits down by a good boulder and cracks the nodules collected.
The label identifies the fossil as Pecopteris vestita. This species has had many names over the years (see Mazon Monday #115). Currently, it's classified as Crenulopteris acadica (Jack Wittry 2014). C. acadica is the second most common flora species found in the Mazon Creek flora. But, with this provenance, the specimen is anything but common.
Thanks for sharing this beautiful and significant fossil, Jim!
