Selected Projects

A Comprehensive Guide to the Fossil Flora of Mazon Creek
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Paleontological Book Publication
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Earth Science Club of Northern Illinois, January, 2020

When Jack Wittry and I met at the Field Museum in 2005, he had been working with the Mazon Creek paleobotanical collections there for roughly a decade. In addition to identifying some of my finds from earlier field trips to the fossil site, he showcased some of the museum’s spectacular specimens and told me he was near to publishing his first book on the subject (The Mazon Creek Fossil Flora, 2006). What he revealed to me was preliminary:  loose pages of photographs, illustrations, descriptions, and a lot of Latin species names and researchers showing not only the history of the study, but also the long-running conundrum of establishing hierarchical associations between various plant forms, in particular prehistoric ones. Today, we have DNA analysis to answer many of the basic questions pertaining to what is living, or at least what was recently alive. The harder task lies in dealing with periods of the Earth from hundreds of millions of years ago and ascertaining the most subtle associations based on the evidence at hand, then extrapolating them in order to reconstruct a larger picture, say, the environment of the time. ​
​                   A Comprehensive Guide to the Fossil Flora
​                        of Mazon Creek, 2020 (front cover).
                             Illinois Coal Swamp
​                    A watercolor by Peggy Macnamara.
​​Around 300 million years ago, northeastern Illinois was tropical in climate, geographically equatorial, and covered in an enormous swamp forest fed by a freshwater river system. It was bordered by a large, brackish-marine bay to the south. Subtle shifts in Earth’s orbit on about a 100,000-year cycle brought rapid movements in sea level, as well as wet-to-monsoonal climate changes with periodic flooding. The Carboniferous swamp forests came well before the dinosaurs and looked much like your archetypal prehistoric scene;  gigantic club mosses, seed ferns, true ferns, horsetails, and ancestral conifers dominated the landscape, which was populated with all sorts of animals from arthropods (spider-like arachnids, insects, scorpions, centipedes) to amphibians. The waters hosted fish, shrimp, mollusks, annelids, echinoderms, and coelenterates. 
​A massive flooding event that buried much of the non-decomposed plant matter in the swamps with mud and silts, eventually giving us coal, also entombed the organisms – plant and animal – that we are now finding beautifully preserved in fossiliferous concretions. In these nodules, iron, carbon, and the finer grains of upstream sediments combined with bicarbonates from seawater in a unique biogeochemical process that can preserve even soft tissue, a rarity in the fossil record. For this reason, a greater diversity of life from this time period remained to be found and studied, and the locality - called Mazon Creek - is today considered among the greatest of sites of the Paleozoic Era, worldwide. 
                        A Crenulopteris acadica spore fern
                     Field Museum of Natural History PP1192.           
                 Sphenopteris spinosa, After Göppert (1841)
                      An extinct Neuropteris ovata seed fern
                       Field Museum of Natural History P31415.
I’ve heard more than once the Earth Science Club of Northern Illinois (ESCONI) described as “the Mazon Creek club.” Though its mission statement speaks of promoting a broader interest in the earth sciences - including geology, paleontology, mineralogy, archaeology, micromounting, and the lapidary arts - Mazon Creek has clearly been a primary subject since the club’s foundation in 1949. I believe this is not only for the quality of the fossils that are available (mentioned above and world famous), but for the proximity of the site and the historical abundance of available fossil specimens. While local coal strip-mining operations were active, concretions were uncovered by the tens of thousands. They were easy to find and transport, and close by - approximately 60 miles – to a major population center, Chicago. It’s easy to perceive that the mid-20th century was the Golden Age of Mazon Creek fossil collecting, when coal extraction in northeaster Illinois was at its zenith and the freshly carved landscape was denuded of foliage so fossil nodules were exposed for the taking. 
​A major collector and researcher during that time, George Langford, who later became a curator of fossil plants at the Field Museum, was twice published by ESCONI for his work on the subject of Mazon Creek flora. He also carefully mapped the locations from where his specimens came. Whereas, the 1950s through the 80s may have been “golden” for collecting, a recent lecturer at the club, Paul Mayer (Collections Manager of Fossil Invertebrates at the Field Museum) made the point that specific research and the sheer quantity of related articles on Mazon Creek have only increased since then. To my understanding, it’s a kind of cross-fertilization, whereby one discovery or thesis leads to a responding article, and to another, and then still others. Quality fossil material was found by both amateurs and professionals back in the day, much of it rightfully ending up in public collections for study, and now a torrent of research is following.
                  Rich Holm, ESCONI officer and Field Museum
              docent, in the museum's paleobotany collections
                          during its Members' Nights event.
In the thirteen years since ESCONI’s publication of Jack Wittry’s first book on the fossil flora of Mazon Creek, I’ve had the benefit of working with him, other scientists, and several associates from the club, each of whom had expertise in a collaborative publication on the fossil animals of Mazon Creek. (The companion volume, see Projects, The Mazon Creek Fossil Fauna.) This book was released in 2012. And, more recently, I was invited to participate in the generation of a second edition after The Mazon Creek Fossil Flora, entitled A Comprehensive Guide to the Fossil Flora of Mazon Creek, largely as a reviewer and editor of the manuscript in its latter stages before printing. The book’s primary editor, Joan Bledig, formerly worked for Loyola Press in Chicago and she and I are colleagues as volunteers in the paleontology collections of the Chicago Academy of Sciences.
In the summer of 2019, I wrote this press release for the club about their new project:

ESCONI is pleased to announce its upcoming publication of Jack Wittry’s latest Mazon Creek book entitled, A Comprehensive Guide to the Fossil Flora of Mazon Creek.  Since the 2006 release of Jack’s first book, The Mazon Creek Fossil Flora, much work has been done in the field and many new taxa have been discovered, some rare and unique to the area. Over 20,000 specimens were identified and studied from three different institutions for this project alone.  In addition to updated names and natural affinities based on the most current scientific literature, this volume contains over 100 more pages of information, with detailed color photos and a broad census compiled from The Field Museum’s collection. Pages in this edition are also reorganized from the most archaic to the most derived plant groups to conform to other contemporary taxonomic works. The Mazon Creek flora of Illinois is still the most diverse known flora of Paleozoic age in North America. This magnificent book integrates all of the latest research and helps to further our understanding of plant evolution, perhaps paving the way for more incredible discoveries. 
           The Mazon Creek Coal Swamp by Peggy Macnamara
             Original art courtesy of the Lizzadro Museum of                           Lapidary Art, Oak Brook, IL. 
               A rare, fertile Crenulopteris mazoniana fern
          donated to the Field Museum from the collection
                  of Keith Robitschek (FMNH PP59095).
​The new book has 287 pages compared to the earlier volume’s 154. I should also mention that it contains half a dozen beautiful watercolor paintings (including the cover image) made specifically for the project by an artist I’ve known for a long time; Peggy Macnamara has been the Field Museum’s Artist-in-Residence since 1990 and is also an Adjunct Professor at my alma mater, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. For me, her wildlife conservation efforts are close to heart. Not only are her paintings lovingly and expertly executed, but there is an immediacy between the artist and subject that I find rare in contemporary art. I recommend that visitors look up her work, in particular the pieces on permanent display at the Field Museum. My latest exhibition, entitled All This Land, aspires to address geologic time, evolution, and the earth, specifically humankind’s direct and often invisible hand in the shaping of the landscape. I commend Peggy Macnamara and all artists who take an activist role in using their art to spread awareness and to make change. Today, it couldn’t be more urgent.
​     There is a limited printing of A Comprehensive Guide to the Fossil Flora of Mazon Creek in both hard and 
​    soft covers. The book is available through the Earth Science Club of Northern Illinois (ESCONI) at esconi.org.
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                    Inside Peggy Macnamara's studio, Artist-in-Residence at the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL
 Project images include field collecting and specimen photos of various Mazon Creek Carboniferous plant species.
​                      © The above artworks may be protected by copyright. They are posted on this site in accordance with
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