This is the “Fossil Friday” post #164.  Expect this to be a somewhat regular feature of the website.  We will post any fossil pictures you send in to esconi.info@gmail.com.  Please include a short description or story.  Check the #FossilFriday Twitter hash tag for contributions from around the world!

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Or… “A Mazon Creek Story 39 Years in the Making”.  Long time ESCONI member Ralph Jewell has quite the Mazon Creek insect and (if possible) an even better story of how he came to possess it.   He posted the whole story over on the Fossil Forum.   Here is an excerpt, head over there for the full deal.  Have I mentioned that access to the Fossil Forum is an invaluable resource for any fossil collector?  It’s free and open, just register a free account and you can participate in many interesting discussions! 

As many of you know I recently bought a Mazon Creek collection from my friend of mine that I have known and collected with for the past 30+ years. Along with the fossils was a lot of his paperwork on the fossils- not where they were found, etc., but pictures and times that he loaned specimens to museums. One specimen was a winged insect that he had loaned to a person from Harvard (Museum of Comparative Zoology- MCZ). Bob did not have a picture of the fossil and kind of thought it was a dragonfly. This person had visited the Mazon Creek Open House that was held on October 27th, 1984, at Northeastern Illinois University, which was the home of the Mazon Creek Project. Bob had brought the fossil to show other collectors and probably to get an id. The person asked if she could borrow it for study at Harvard and he agreed and “loaned” it to her and later received a receipt for the fossil and personal letter from her. That was the last time he had ever heard anything about the fossil. This has always been a sore subject with Bob and he would mention it all of the time, and that is why I have always been turned off to loaning any specimens.

A couple months back I told Bob that I was going to reach out to Harvard and see if they could tell me anything about the fossil, since it was never returned. I sent a nice e-mail to them along with PDFs of the receipt and letter. About two weeks later, I received an email response from a Curatorial Associate at MCZ Harvard. She advised me that they looked at all of their Mazon creek fossils and could not find a particular fossil that I was describing with the information and # that I had for the specimen. Mind you, the receipt had a number assigned to it as well as what it was, as far as their identification (Spaniodera). She did send me an attachment, that contained all of their fossils from Mazon Creek. She further advised me, that after the person that borrowed it left Harvard, she went to another school to get her PhD and then advised me where she might be currently working. I thanked her for the information and that she advised me that they will continue to keep an eye out for the fossil. I then did some more searching, and I actually found the person that I had been looking for and an email address for her. I sent her an email and attached the same email that I sent to Harvard and I expounded by stating that I was Bob‘s friend and that he has talked about this for the past 25 years. She got back to me and stated that she was on vacation and when she arrives home, she would look through some of her old boxes from MCZ, but also stated that it could be in the MCZ Collection , but hard to locate. I thanked her and waited for a response. She got back to me on Wednesday and advised me that she was going to go through the boxes over the weekend. A couple of hours later I received a follow-up e-mail from her advising me that the had found the fossil and it matched up with the number that was assigned to it. I was so happy. I asked her to send me some pictures of it, which she did. She sent a very nice email, apologizing and say that she did not know why she did not return it after she left MCZ and thought maybe she was going to do a paper on it, or something else, but she did not remember. Either way, it was great that she went through her stuff and found this piece.

This specimen was identified as Spaniodera, a genus with multiple species.  Anton Handlirsch (1865-1935) named a few of the species of Spaniodera in the early part of the 1900’s.  He was an Austrian entomologist.   His most significant work was in the study of fossil insects.  Spaniodera is now a synonym of Miamia bronsoni.  M. bronsoni was described by J. D. Dana in 1864.

This is a beautiful fossil, Ralph!  Thanks for sharing!  Now… on to the photos!