This is Throwback Thursday #250. 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! email:[email protected].
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This post originally ran as Flashback Friday #37 in 2020.
Andy Hay Speaks at Lizzadro on Mazon Creek Plants
On Saturday, March 10, our own Andrew Hay gave a talk at the Lizzadro Museum to a group of interested families. Some of the audience members are signed up to travel to Mazon Creek with our Don Auler as guide for the Museum. So many signed up that they now have two full trips to go fossil hunting and a long waiting list.
Andy took us back in a time machine to Illinois 300 MYA. We are in a hot swampy area that is located near the equator (unlike today). The first fossils found there were of plants and in 1853 the first insect was found. The insects like dragonflies and cockroaches grew very big in those days. At this time Europe was attached to the US up around Newfoundland and our NE coast and it was one big swamp. Over the many years there were 16 successive coal swamps in Illinois. After the civil war we began to mine the coal in the area that was formed when all these plants died. As they mined they found concretions in the layer just above the coal veins. Dr. Eugene Richardson, an entomologist at the Field Museum did a lot of research here with many graduate students and amateurs. As they mined, the holes were left empty instead of being filled in and fossils could be found there. In 1970 Peabody Coal ended their mining in Pit 15, 14, 13, and 11. Com Ed bought the site for a nuclear plant and they were not interested in fossil collecting. The Mazon Creek Project worked hard to lobby the state to allow collecting there. In 1999 Governor Ryan purchased Pit 11 and the DNR (Department of Natural Resources) was to negotiate with the Illinois State Museum to arrange for permits to collect. That procedure is still being developed even though the season began March 1.
All the big plants that grew 300 MYA fell into the anoxic swamp and were buried without rotting. The high sulfur coal of Southern Illinois is no longer mined, but Peabody had good low sulfur coal here. The Mazon Creek itself was the site of the first fossil finds in its silty slimy mud. There is no collecting allowed there now as it undermines the banks and the residents will not allow it. Mr. McCluckie was an early collector and had an excellent collection that he sent to the Smithsonian.
Andy had samples of even earlier plants – blue-green algae that took carbon dioxide out of the air and used carbon to produce plant scum in the swamps. This happened 400 MYA. Algae that deposit lime laid down the Michigan dolomite.
In the Pennsylvanian there were many ferns that are very much like the ferns of today, except most of them reproduced with seeds instead of the spores of today. Some were 100 feet tall and 2-3 feet in diameter. He highly recommended a visit to the forest at the Burpee Museum. Many of the tall plants back them had mangrove like roots developing from the trunk to help hold the plants upright on the silty soil. He showed examples of Annularia, Sigillaria, Lepidendron bark (showing the bark pattern where leaves attached), Lycopod leaves (with needle like leaves), Sphenopteris, cones of Lycopod ferns, and Neuropteris. He also tempted us with slides of some of the animals to be found alongside these many plants, including clam, pectin, worms, sea cucumbers, shrimp, centipede, insects, fish, cephalopod, and the Tully Monster.
Everyone enjoyed Andy’s talk and the fossils and many were looking forward to their first fossil trip to Mazon Creek. We also found some potential new members for our club. Don Auler, Don Brazda, and Jim Fairchild also attended the talk.
