The story of George Langford [Sr.] and his fossils began two hundred and fifty million years ago.  At that time, Nature in Illinois was experimenting with forests of fern trees.  When a leaf or frond fell onto wet silt or clay its own mineral content hardened the clay immediately around it, forming a clay stone nodule shaped more or less like a cake of soap.  In the course of time it became fossilized.

As more and more leaves fell into the mud, more and more nodules were produced and remained in the clay until coal was discovered under the clay.  In mining this coal, the clay had to be stripped from above and moved aside by heavy earth-moving equipment.  Then, heavy drag-lines would remove the clay and dump it in long, high ridges.  These ridges became the "spoil heaps" that contain thousands of clay-stone nodules of all shapes and sizes.

George would search these ridges and valleys for nodules, picking them up by the bucketsfull, then cracking them open with a hammer.  Scarely one nodule out of twenty had a specimen worth keeping.  But is was those ones-out-of-twenty that made George noted for his plant fossils. 

Other collectors had broken open these nodules and had found leaves and small crabs and insects, but George saw his opportunity to collect a really large quantity and variety of these fossils, all in one small locality.

These nodules, when originally found, were full of dust and clay, and had to be washed with water and brushed clean.  When they were wet, the leaves were shiny and attractive, but when they dried out they were clean but dull-looking.  And, when exposed to air, the surface of the leaf impression became dusty again, and obviously needed some sort of protection. 

George formulated a very dilute mixture of water and Gum Arabic, a form of thin, glue-like material.  When this mixture was applied to the leaf surface, it became shiny, the small details of the leaf became much easier to see, and the color of the leaf was enhanced and made highly attractive.  George called this process "developing" the fossil.  There is a striking improvement from the original fossil to the "developed" fossil, and its these "developed" fossils that have brought acclaim to George and his handsome specimens.

Sydne Holmes Langford