This is Mazon Monday post #258.  What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil?  Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com.

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Myriotheca scaberrima is a very rare fern, which was originally only known from fertile foliage.  It was named by Leo Lesquereux as Sphenopteris scaberrima in 1870.  In 1901, it was reclassified as Myriotheca scaberrima by Elias Howard Sellards (1875 – 1961).  Sellards was a paleontologist, geologist, and anthropologist.  The Texas State Historical Association has a nice summary of his career, which spanned almost 60 years.  Sellards played an outsized role in the development of paleontology in Texas.

SELLARDS, ELIAS HOWARD (1875–1961). Elias Howard Sellards, geologist and paleontologist, was born in Carter City, Kentucky, on May 2, 1875, the son of Wiley W. and Sarah (Menach) Sellards. The family moved to Kansas during Elias’s youth. He attended the University of Kansas, where he received his B.A. and M.A. degrees, and Yale University, from which he graduated in 1903 with a doctoral degree in paleontology. During his years as a graduate student in Kansas he discovered about 6,000 specimens of Permian insects, among the richest finds of its kind. After completing his doctorate he worked briefly at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh and taught at Rutgers University for one year. In 1904 he was appointed professor of geology and zoology at the University of Florida. From 1907 to 1918 he served as state geologist of Florida, and in 1908 he attended the first Conference for the Preservation of Natural Resources in Washington, presided over by President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1918 Sellards moved to Austin, Texas, where he worked in the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas. He was commissioned by the Texas attorney general’s office to research the history of the Red River and testify in a boundary dispute with Oklahoma (see BOUNDARIES). His evidence gained a settlement favorable to Texas. During his forty-three years in Texas, Sellards also made numerous significant finds, including early sculpture in East Texas, estimated to be 25,000 years old; Pleistocene deposits in Bee County containing the fossilized remains of elephants, camels, giant wolves, and three-toed horses; a twenty-five-foot sea lizard near the Gulf Coast; and brontosaurus tracks. Sellards was the author of numerous works, including Pliocene and Pleistocene (1906), The Geology of Texas (1933), and Early Man in America (1952), and was widely honored in his profession. He served a president of the Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists in 1938 and the Paleontological Society in 1942. He was assistant director of the Bureau of Economic Geology from 1925 to 1932 and director from 1932 to 1945. He was a longtime member of the Philosophical Society of Texas. Sellards married Anna Mary Alford on September 4, 1907. The couple had two daughters. He died in Austin on February 11, 1961.

Jack Wittry writes of M. scaberrima on page 110 of his book “A Comprehensive Guide to the Fossil Flora of Mazon Creek”.

Myriotheca scaberrima (Lesquereux) Sellards, 1902

1870. Sphenopteris scaberrima Lesquereux: p. 408, pl. 15, figs. 1, 2
1902. Myriotheca scaberrima (Lesquereux) Sellards: p. 199, pl. 7, figs. 5a-c
1958. Myriotheca scaberrima Lesquereux; Langford: p. 277, fig. 508
1971. Myriotheca scaberrima (Lesquereux) Sellards; Pfefferkorn: p. 12, pl. 5 figs. 1-7

DESCRIPTION: The penultimate rachis is thick and covered in pits which probably represent the bases of scales. The ultimate pinnae are linear-lanceolate, subopposite, pointed at the apex, and up to 40 mm long and 9 mm wide. The rachis is heavy and covered with wart-like bumps, which may have been the bases of hairs or scales. The pinnules are subtriangular and average 3 mm long and half as wide. They vary slightly in size along the pinna length. There are 40 to 50 equally spread, free, sessile, and spherically shaped sporangia on each pinnule. Each is 0.4 mm across and they completely cover the lower surface of every pinnule. The isolated spores are correlated with Camptotriletes triangularis (Pfefferkorn et al., 1971). The venation consists of a very heavy and decurrent midvein. The lateral veins are well marked and generally divide once at a shallow angle about halfway to the margin.

REMARKS: Myriotheca scaberrima is very rare. It was named only on fertile foliage that produced free sporangia. The sterile form had not yet been found at the time this species was erected, so the details of the venation could not be determined. Examples of sterile foliage have now been discovered. The sterile foliage and venation description found here is the first for this species.

Specimens

From Wittry – Field Museum specimens

FMNH PP58665

FMNH PP13811

FMNH PP58256