This is Mazon Monday post #196. What's your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:[email protected].
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George Langford, Sr. (1876-1964) was a prolific collector of Mazon Creek fossils. He collected and then sold or donated multiple collections of Mazon Creek fossils. The fossils he collected in various museums around the country including Illinois State Museum and the Denver Museum of Natural History. In 1947, he donated his bulk of his collection to the Field Museum of Natural History, then called the Chicago Natural History Museum, and joined it as curator of fossil plants.
His grandson, George III, created a website that has quite a bit of information about both his grandfather and his father, George Langford Jr. The image and page below, come from that informative and useful resource.
In 1939, their Christmas card included a photo of the "Fossil Gardens of Northern Illinois". The picture is a view of the strip mines about 1 mile south of Wilmington, IL, at a place that was not far from where Cinder Ridge Golf Course is today.
George included this card in his first book with short descriptions of the fossils on each side. The fossil on the left was identified as Sphenophyllum emarginatum. It was originally named in 1829 by Adolphe-Theodore Brongniart, known as the Father of Paleobotany. It's a relative of modern day horsetails. While the one on the right, was identified as Diplothmema zobelli, now known as Sphenopteris spinosa. Sphenopteris was part of the forest understory. It was first described in 1841 by Heinrich Goppert.
