This is Throwback Thursday #223. In these, we look back into the past at ESCONI specifically and Earth Science in general. If you have any contributions, (science, pictures, stories, etc ...), please sent them to [email protected]. Thanks!
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Eugene Richardson, Jr. wrote a nice little article for the May 1952 edition of the Chicago Natural History Museum's Bulletin. At the time, the Field Museum was called to as the Chicago Natural History Museum from 1943 to 1966. Richardson was Curator of Fossil invertebrates from 1946 until he retired in 1982.
Richardson working on Permian brachiopods collected by Dr. Sharat Roy. Roy was Curator of Fossil Invertebrates and later Chief Curator of the Geology Department.
Richardson's article is called "Fossil Localities Old and New".
FOSSIL LOCALITIES OLD AND NEW
by Eugene S. Richardson, Jr
Curator of Fossil Invertebrates
W er, when robins, earthworms, skunks, and such little wild creatures scurry about and begin to take a new interest in life, the paleontologists likewise look up from their winter overlay of books and microscopes. "So pricketh hem nature in hir corages," quoth Chaucer, our favorite spring poet; "Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages."
And away on various "pilgrimages" go the collectors of fossils. Highway construction crews stumble over them, quarry managers shoo them away from their blasting, coal miners find them a mile under the ground; they peer into gullies, chip pieces off of rock ledges, dig in fields and gravel pits, and return to their collections with new treasures from the distant past. Some of these treasures seep into the Museum during the rest of the year, as their proprietors bring them here to be identified (or sometimes just to be admired). We are grateful to those who allow us to look at their fossils, for often we can add a new occurrence to our records.
But an active and growing collection requires additions of its own, beyond the occasional glimpse of what someone else has collected, and so it is that the "fossil hounds" of the Museum staff also go forth to gather new specimens.
There are two kinds of localities that we can work on: the old ones and the new ones. Old localities are those where fossils have been collected before, and new localities are those where we hope to find some. For the benefit of the Museum collection, staff members are planning to visit some of each during the field season of 1952. For the twenty-second consecutive year, George Langford, Curator of Fossil Plants, will make several visits to the spoil heaps of the open coal mines in the vicinity of Wilmington and Braidwood, Illinois. That qualifies as an old locality. The writer, on the other hand, will visit a new locality near Mecca, Indiana, where interesting fossil fragments were discovered only last year by Dr. Rainer Zangerl, Curator of Fossil Reptiles.
SEEK NEW SPECIES
We collect in new localities in order to find new species that should be made known to science, or in order to gain more information on the past distribution of known species, or in order to improve the representation of ancient faunas in the collection. "But why," one might ask, "do you keep going back to the old localities? Surely, you already have all the fossils you need from those places."
No. There are some old localities that aren't worth revisiting for our collection because no species other than those we already have from them has been found there for many years. These we may call "used- up localities," and we might go back to them again to get additional specimens for exchanging with other museums, but not for our own collection. There are other old collecting grounds where we couldn't collect if we wanted to, such as the famous crinoid beds at Crawfordsville, Indiana, or the quarry near Milwaukee that once yielded quantities of fossil fishes. The first is inaccessible because the surface exposures have yielded almost all of their fossils and the rest lie under a forbidding weight of rock and soil; the second, thanks to a legitimate but discouraging operation in land reclamation, is now the bed of a river. These we may call "extincť localities."
But the area near Braidwood and Wilmington, though old, is neither used up nor extinct. No matter how often a locality has been visited, if it still yields fossils that were not in the collection previously, it remains a productive locality, and one that should be periodically re-examined with the object of collecting representatives of all the species present. As in most human endeavor, there is a point of diminishing returns in fossil collecting; it is reached later in some localities than in others.
REASONS FOR RETURN VISITS
A question that may be asked in regard to these places is: "Why don't you take one trip and spend several months all at once instead of doing it in pieces, a few days at a time?" A single long visit might indeed be the answer to collecting in some areas, but conditions differ from place to place. The plant-bearing clay near Puryear, Tennessee, has already been visited a half a dozen times by Mr. Langford, with the writer or Dr. R. H. Whitfield, Research Associate in Fossil Plants, accompanying him, and it is still productive even though strenuously explored on each visit. This is because the clay is being actively quarried for brick-making, and new beds are continually exposed.
The old spoil heaps of the Wilmington-Braidwood coal mines are still productive, even though the miners have long since moved to greener (blacker, that is) fields; for rain, frost, and thaw continually free new specimens from the hard clay of the heaps. Digging in this clay with hand shovels or picks is a forbidding task. In terms of fossils recovered per unit of labor and expense, it is sounder practice to let the weather do the work and to return many times to pick up the specimens freed by natural means.
Whether a locality is old or new, close to civilization or far, it is well for the collector, amateur or professional, to take advice from the hunter and camper: don't go alone. Not only will two people be able to find and bring home somewhat more than twice as much "bacon" as one, but each will be ready to help the other in case of a fall or a flat tire.
I hope you guys are getting out there and finding some nice specimens for "Brag Night" in September!
