This is Mazon Monday post #184. What's your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:[email protected].
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Lorenzo Eugene Daniels was a Farmer, Sheriff of Grundy County, IL, Assistant State Geologist, Indiana, and an Amateur Conchologist. He was born in Mazon, Illinois on March 4th 1852. In the scientific literature of the time, he is referred to as L.E. Daniels. He was a prolific fossil collector with a keen interest in midwestern mollusks. Upon his death in Chicago in 1918, his huge collection of land and freshwater shells was purchased by Bryant Walker of Detroit for the Museum of Zoology at the University of Michigan.
We mention him here for his contributions to Mazon Creek fossils. An interest that was kindled during his boyhood. He amassed what was one of the largest and most valuable collections of Mazon Creek fossils at the time. It was especially known for containing specimens of rare fossil insects. During his tenure as Grundy County Sheriff, the sheriff's rooms in the Grundy county court house were said to contain one of the finest public displays of Mazon Creek specimens. After the death of J.C Carr in 1919, Daniels' collection was combined with Carr's and donated to the University of Illinois. Carr was a good friend and also a prolific collector of Mazon Creek fossils.
Purdue University in Indiana has a nice biographical sketch of Daniels.
In his boyhood days, Daniels became interested in fossils and shells, and later in reptiles, conchology finally becoming his especial hobby. His home was located near Mazon Creek, which in that region flows through the Coal Measures, exposing numerous outcrops of the Upper Carboniferous Rocks. These he found rich in animal remains, especially in those of insects. In time he gathered personally one of the largest and most valuable private collections of Mazon Creek fossil insects extant. These were later worked up by a Dr. Handlirsch of Vienna and the results published as a Memoir by the U.S. National Museum.
Daniels has six Mazon Creek animals named for him, a spider, a scorpion, and four insects. Fossilworks has references to some of the specimens he contributed to UMMP and USNM.
- Arthrolycosa danielsi (spider)
- Gerarus danielsi (winged insect)
- Asemoblatta danielsi (cockroach)
- Eubleptus danielsi (insect - Paleodictyioptera)
- Eoscorpius danielsi (scorpion)
- Aenigmatodes danielsi (insect)
His collection is spoken of with great regard in turn of the century scientific proceedings. He along with J.C Carr are mentioned in the book "Early Twentieth Century Carboniferous Paleobotany in North America" on page 69 in Chapter 4 - "History of significant collections of Carboniferous (Mississippian and Pennsylvanian) plant fossils in museums in the United States".
CARR-DANIELS COLLECTION, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, URBANA, ILLINOIS
R. L. Leary
The Carr-Daniels Collection at the Natural History Museum of the University of Illinois consists almost entirely of specimens from the Mazon Creek area near Morris, Illinois. The collectors, L. E. Daniels and J. C. Carr, both resided in Morris while gathering plant fossils along Mazon Creek in Grundy County, Illinois. The majority of the specimens in these collections are ironstone nodules with only a few compressions.
The Carr-Daniels Collection was acquired by the University of Illinois in 1920. For many years the specimens remained in storage and were inaccessible for study. At one time, part of the Daniels Collection was investigated by A. C. Noé (see Chapter 14, this volume), who published photographs of several specimens (Noé, 1925). In the late 1940s, W. N. Stewart, paleobotanist of the University of Illinois, examined the Carr-Daniels Collection and prepared a catalog of the best-preserved specimens (Stewart, 1950).
As is true of all fossil plants collected from the Mazon Creek area, most specimens are foliage remains of Pecopteris and Neuropteris. Many of the leaf fragments in the Carr Daniels Collection are large enough to show something of the high degree of polymorphism within a frond. The Carr Daniels Collection also contains many fertile specimens of lycopsids, sphenopsids, and pecopterids.
Of the total number of specimens (4,018) in the two collections, 758 belong to the Daniels Collection and 3,260 to the Carr Collection. The combined collections have 103 different species assigned to 51 genera.
