in the Pennsylvanian Deposits of the Will County, Illinois Coal Measures
The Field Notes of George Langford, Sr. in the Years 1937-1960.
Prepared and organized by George Langford, Jr., 1973.
Copyright George Langford, III, 2010
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Table of Contents
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manuscript was prepared by my father, George Langford, Jr. about 1973,
nine years after the death of his father, George Langford, Sr. to
commemorate their cooperative efforts and my grandfather's nearly
solitary work in the field of collecting Pennsylvanian era fossils in
the strip mine spoil heaps located in Wilmington Township, Will County,
Illinois over the period between 1911 and 1962, ending with George,
Sr.'s retirement in 1962 as Curator of Plant Fossils at the Chicago
Natural History Museum. The manuscript is an account of the prodigous amount of physical and intellectual work by the two men and by Sydne Holmes Langford, my grandmother, who both aided and put up with the mess. The words of both men, reproduced on this webpage, also reveal that all of the photographs in the manuscript to which this work is an Appendix were made personally by George, Sr. before he donated the fossil specimens to the Illinois State Museum at Springfield around 1940. I also have the two loose-leaf notebooks of photographs and sketches that George, Sr. describes herein that formed the basis of his two famous books, "The Wilmington Coal Flora from a Pennsylvanian deposit in Will County, Illinois," and "The Wilmington Coal Fauna and Additions to the Wilmington Coal Flora from a Pennsylvanian Deposit in Will County, Illinois," published by ESCONI Associates, Downers Grove, Illinois, in 1958 and 1962, respectively. The manuscript of this Appendix also reveals that the manuscript to which this is an Appendix is actually a record of all the species found by George, Sr. and George, Jr. during their work together, intended to serve as George, Jr.'s personal fossil collection, all the original fossil specimens having been donated to the aforementioned Illinois State Museum long before. It is apparently not the "third book" which George. Sr.'s superiors at the Chicago Natural History Museum would not let him submit to ESCONI for publication. A few words on navigation of this website: The presentation closely adheres with one or two exceptions to the order in which the manuscript pages are numbered, but I have endeavored to keep the tables of contents short. If you want to read in the same order, use your browser's BACK button to come back to the associated table before proceeding to the next item in the list. There are a great many links to the localities where the fossils were collected ... again, use the BACK button. There are also many links between mentions of fossil names and the picture book, where the BACK button will keep you on track. George Langford [III] Sc.D., May 2010
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