Slides of Mazon Creek Fossils

[Nimravis]

I figured that the best way to end this post was to show Walter’s garage, where he kept the majority of his fossils displayed. He has other fossils that were his favorite in his basement. Walter was a real collector and spent many hours each day either collecting, working on displays, assembling fossil grab bags for trips or bags that he donated to the Wilmington Historical Society as a fund raiser. When he was not physically working on fossils, he always had visitors coming to his house to see his collection. Professors from all over would stop by to chat him up on fossils, and he loved it. His wife Rita put up with it because he loved his fossils so much. In his garage he had a log book that he would ask you to sign if you came to see his collection, he had a lot of Mazon Creek collectors and professors in that book. I really miss the weekend trips that my son and I made every Saturday and Sunday to spend time with these two great people and I miss them very much.

 

 

 

 

 

More displays- he would get old Times watch displays to show off his fossils. I believe on two occasions Walter donated all of the fossils in the display cases to the Mazon Creek Project. Walter had no problem giving away the fossils, but he was not letting his display cases go. Once they were empty, he refilled them with fossils from his basement.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Nimravis]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The picture below shows the hundreds of jellyfish that Walter had put away. Walter would pick up every jellyfish that he saw, back in the day, collectors would just leave them, but not Walter.

 

 

I hope everyone enjoyed this post.

[Tidgy's Dad]

I enjoyed it very much. 

You were very lucky to have known Walter so well. 

[Nimravis]

26 minutes ago, Tidgy's Dad said:

I enjoyed it very much. 

You were very lucky to have known Walter so well. 

Thanks Adam and I agree.

[Nimravis]

2 hours ago, Coco said:

The result of your pics is good !

Not as good as I hoped, but reducing them takes something away from them. The slides are exceptional.

[Nimravis]

3 hours ago, crabfossilsteve said:

Holy cow that is/was an absolutely amazing collection.

As stated at the beginning, these were not all Walter's, many were from other collections.

[Phevo]

Thanks for sharing those slides, impressive amount of dedication went in to his collection

 

[Mark Kmiecik]

I miss him. I miss visiting his garage. His specimens put museum collections to shame. My favorite was was the monster Annularia stellata towards the back on the west wall, if I remember the location correctly, and the pyrite stars near the side door.

[bigred97]

Gosh what I wouldn't give to get one of his private tours and sign his guestbook. What a collection and what a display. And what a nice man from everything you've told us about him.

[RCFossils]

I never had an opportunity to meet Walter but heard many good things about him.

He found so museum quality specimens over the years.

Thanks for taking the time to transfer the slides.

I really enjoyed the post..

 

[michele 1937]

On 9/27/2020 at 10:37 AM, Nimravis said:

Palaeoxyris

 

      

 

Porzione millepiedi

 

 

Pesce d'argento (Thysanuran)

 

 

FINIR QUESTO POST QUESTO POMERIGGIO

Spectacular collection too beautiful

[Ruger9a]

I've truly enjoyed this post, thank you.

[Darbi]

Wow, it's really nice! I wonder how many concretions they had to get through to get these high quality fossils.

[Nimravis]

5 hours ago, RCFossils said:

I never had an opportunity to meet Walter but heard many good things about him.

He found so museum quality specimens over the years.

Thanks for taking the time to transfer the slides.

I really enjoyed the post..

 

Thanks Rob and he has fossils that he donated I’m many museums and college collections across the US.

[Nimravis]

45 minutes ago, Darbi said:

Wow, it's really nice! I wonder how many concretions they had to get through to get these high quality fossils.

A lot of concretions would have been gone through, but back then there were so many exposed it was no problem finding them, that is half the battle.

[jdp]

These pictures are fantastic, especially the field photos and the photos of many of the important collectors in Mazon Creek history. It's fascinating to see these people side-by-side with photos of fossils I know like the back of my hand (that beautiful Ophiderpeton, for instance). I would love to hear all the stories about all these people sometime.

[Mark Kmiecik]

4 hours ago, Darbi said:

Wow, it's really nice! I wonder how many concretions they had to get through to get these high quality fossils.

"Back in the day" there were places where a 50 x 50 foot spot would fill half of a 5-gallon bucket because of size and/or numbers. That was up through the mid-seventies when some of the pits were still actively being excavated. I started hunting in 1990 and was lucky enough to hunt a few spots like this on private property. They still exist. It's just a matter of convincing property owners to let you hunt on their land. Nowadays, on public land, you're doing extremely well if you come across one for every 100 feet you walk. Back then it was as much as one per foot of ground you covered. On the average I would say one out of 50-100 specimens you find is museum quality now. Back then, it was one out of 10, simply because you could be more selective about what you picked up. Most collectors would leave broken concretions behind, except in areas where rare specimens were frequently found. Also, back then the spoil piles were exposed. Now they are overgrown with decades of dense vegetation, so construction sites and areas of land reclamation are prime spots for collecting.

[Nimravis]

4 hours ago, Mark Kmiecik said:

Most collectors would leave broken concretions behind,

You are correct Mark, and the ones that they would leave behind would be great finds nowadays.

[bigred97]

For most people, if they had a time machine, they would go back and witness great historical happenings or right some wrong in their lives. I would be in the Mazon Creek area when the pits were active. 

[Nimravis]

@Mark Kmiecik Here are a picture of Walter that I took in August of 1997 at Northeastern University during one of the Mazon Creek Open Houses. During this Open House the new book on Mazon Creek fauna came out and Walter felt like a star,  because People wanted pictures of him holding the book that had the cover picture of his spider on it. He also had to take a seat with the authors of the different chapters that where in attendance so he could also sign books. He had such a blast.

 

 

 

Here are a couple other pics that I took of him when we were out collecting at Shadow Lakes (Pit 4).

 

 

[fossilguy312]

Wow - what a fabulous group of Mazon Creek specimens. I've spent a lot of time working with Mazon Creek fossils myself....   some of these examples are truly spectacular and I've seen a LOT of concretions...   Though plenty of you on this board are more knowledgeable than I am, so I don't pretend to be a true Mazon Creek expert...

[deutscheben]

What a wonderful collection of specimens and memories! Thank you so much for sharing this history @Nimravis.

[stats]

Thanks for an awesome post!  Sorry I missed it until now.  The spiders and scorpions are breathtaking!  Sounds like a very interesting guy... I would have loved to meet him!

 

Who is the other person in the picture with Francis Tully?

 

Cheers,

Rich

 

[stats]

Walter was mentioned in the acknowledgements section of this paper describing Testajapyx.  Here is a post I created on esconi.org.

 

https://www.esconi.org/esconi_earth_science_club/2020/05/mazon-monday-8-species-spotlight-testajapyx-thomasi-mazoncreek-fossils-mazonmonday-insect.html

 

Cheers,

Rich

 

[Nimravis]

3 hours ago, stats said:

Who is the other person in the picture with Francis Tully?

The person with the hard hat is George Agazzi, also mentioned in the acknowledgment paper that you mentioned. The person standing next to Tully is Bob Ulaszex.