| Page | Topic |
| My
grandfather,
George
Langford,
Sr. wrote
two books about this subject that were published by
ESCONI Associates, Inc. in 1958 and 1963: "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." He next prepared a third manuscript, but
scientific politics intervened as explained here
by George Langford, Jr., my father. George, Sr. died in 1964, and
after George, Jr.'s death in 1996 I inherited another manuscript.
The present webpage is a copy of the pen & ink written manuscript,
i.e., in my grandfather's own hand, and with his own original
photographs, that was intended to be George, Jr.'s personal fossil
collection, the actual fossils having been donated as a scientific
resource to the Illinois State Museum at Springfield, about 1940. I have copies of correspondence between George, Jr. and the late Mr. Don Auler of ESCONI, indicating that George, Jr. donated the original manuscripts of the first two books and the manuscript of what had originally been intended to be the third book to ESCONI in 1987. It was my father's expressed wish in the letter of transmittal that all three manuscripts would find their way eventually into the archives of the Illinois State Museum in Springfield. The material presented here is best viewed with a browser that allows right-clicking and "view image." That would be Netscape, Firefox, IceMonkey, IceWeasel, IceApe ... but not, alas, Internet Explorer. There is an astonishing amount of detail that can be seen in the scanned images of the photographs that my grandfather made, some over 70 years ago. Please dig as deep as you can in the following pages. I have tried to keep each page within the confines of the monitor window. One exception is the very long, three-column index to the fossil flora, which I prepared so as to facilitate location of the photographs according to the scientific names that my grandfather applied to the fossils. There are several hundred fossils represented here and many more photographs of them ... and many more images on this website, when the different scan resolutions are considered. You are welcome to study these pages, but please do not publish the images or data anywhere, nor make any economic or personal decisions based on this data, as I cannot vouch for the accuracy of my grandfather's identifications of the fossils. I have no training whatsoever in paleobotany. Many of the photographs have straight pencil lines drawn with hash marks, which I think represent one inch for scale. All the original pages were 8.5 by 11 inch (letter) size, which may also help in scaling the fossil images. Some fossils have fractions written alongside - these are magnification factors, I think. George Langford, III, May 20, 2010
|
|
| i |
Title
page:
"The
Fossil
Flora and Fauna of the Pennsylvanian Period in Will County, Illinois." |
| ii |
George
Langford,
Sr.'s
dedication
of
the book to George Langford, Jr. |
| 1 |
"Strip
Mine"
Christmas
card
by
George and Sydne Langford, 1939. |
| 2
-
8 |
Introductory
material
about
the
formation
of the coal over which the fossiliferous
deposits lay at the Will County site. |
| 9
-
10 |
Formation
mechanism
of
the
siderite
concretions that contain the fossils. |
| 11 |
Portraits
of
the
two
collectors,
George, Jr. and George, Sr. and the mining
process; 1938. |
| 12
-
13 |
More
of
GL's handwritten material
on
the
formation of coal. |
| 14
-
15 |
Brief
description
of
the
collection
site, types of deposits, and sketches of
some of the fossils found there. |
| 16
-
85 |
Descriptions
of
the
fossil
flora found by George Langford, Sr. and George Langford, Jr. |
| 86
-
126 |
Descriptions
of
the
fossil
fauna similarly found. |
| Appendix I |
Lecture notes prepared by Sydne Holmes Langford for George Langford, Sr.'s invited speaking engagements in the Chicago, Illinois area. |
| Appendix II |
The Field Notes of George Langford, Sr., a manuscript edited and supplemented by GeorgeLangford, Jr. in 1973. |