Slides of Mazon Creek Fossils

[Nimravis]

I decided to take the time and try to shoot pictures of slides that I received years ago from my Fossil Mentor Walter Lietz. They are slides that he would show and talk about at the various Fossil talks that he would give prior to us taking the participants out collecting. This post may take me a couple days to complete due to the number of slides that I have to take pictures of. I have tried to do this before, but the machine I was using made it difficult. This time I am using a lighted hand held slide viewer and shooting them with my I Phone. It is tedious, since I then have to e-mail them to myself in a reduced size format and then save each one. Some will show up real good and some may not. The slides contain pictures of many of the fossils that were in his collection, as well as some that were in his friends, Francis Tully, of who the Tully Monster was named after. There are also slides that we received from Northwestern University’s Mazon Creek Project and probably some from other collections. This post is more as “Eye Candy”, as I will not be naming the individual slides. There will be a lot of different flora and fauna species to look at, as well as pictures of the collecting areas. I am going to post about 50 pictures now and I will try to take more pictures later in the day. They are in no particular order, I am shooting them as I grab them and I believe you will enjoy these. If you see something in particular that you find interesting and want to know what it is, let me know and I will try to help out, or another member may be able too.

 

I figured that I would start with a couple pictures of Walter that were taken about 40 years ago. The first picture is of him out in the field collecting and the second is him in his garage standing by some of his display cases, he had tons of them. He entrusted me with his slides, knowing that I would always take care of them. These are the first time that they have been shown in maybe 20 years. Most of the slides that you will see throughout this post were taken in the early 70’s and 80’s. I hope you enjoy these.

 

 

On with the fossils-

 

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CHECK BACK LATER FOR MORE PICS

[Bobby Rico]

Wow some incredible fossils the fishes, horseshoe crabs and bugs here are beautiful. I think your method  for capturing the sides works really well . Thanks for sharing.

[Scylla]

I especially liked 

[Nimravis]

Here are some pictures from 1972 and I believe these were students from Marietta College and one of the pics is of them trying to pull their van out of the mud. (Pit 11 area on all scenery pictures).

 

 

 

 

 

Scenery shots-

 

 

[Nimravis]

Collecting gear-

 

 

 

Flora-

 

 

 

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STAY TUNED, MANY MORE TO FOLLOW.

[Nimravis]

Here are a few of the collectors that I knew and collected with, with the exception of Francis Tully (Far right), I never met him. The woman in the picture is Rita, Walter’s wife. Walter always said that she found the best fossils because she was closest to the ground- lol.

 

 

Here is another picture of Tully.

 

 

Here are a number of spiders-

 

 

 

 

 

 

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This is a picture of Walter’s spider l, Trigonomartus pustulatus, which is on the cover of the book- “Richardson’s Guide to The Fossil Fauna of Mazon Creek”. Walter donated both halves to the Mazon Creek Project.

 

The other side of this Fossil was the first fossil picture that I posted at the beginning of this thread. 
 

[Nimravis]

Here are some great pictures of Pit 11, most of these were taken in September of 1970 and September of 1972, you can just imagine the concretions that were just sitting there waiting to be picked up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[Nimravis]

If I remember correctly, any of the fossils that have the “red” background in them were from Tully’s collection.

 

On with more Fauna-

 

I know I said that I was not going to identify any, but depending on my time frame I will. Now some of the names might have changed, but I am going to go with what I have.

 

Chitons-

 

 

 

Kottixerxes gloriosus