This is Mazon Monday post #341. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil?  Tell us at esconi.info@gmail.com.

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Titanoscorpio douglassi is known from just three specimens, but the holotype is a breathtaking three-inch claw on display at the Prehistoric Life Museum in the basement of Dave’s Down to Earth Rock Shop (see Throwback Thursday #94) in Evanston, Illinois. And yes, it really is breathtaking!

The holotype was discovered by Dave L. Douglass in 1966 at the Northern Illinois Coal Company’s Pit 1. At the time, the site was home to the Greer Earth Moving School. Today, the former Pit 1 is the location of Cinder Ridge Golf Course in Wilmington, Illinois.

Titanoscorpio douglassi was described and named in honor of Dave Douglass by Eric Norman Kjellesvig-Waering (1912–1979). The description was published posthumously in his monumental work, “A Restudy of the Fossil Scorpionida of the World” (see pages 240–242), which appeared in Palaeontographica Americana in 1986. Kjellesvig-Waering was an eminent invertebrate paleontologist who specialized in eurypterids and fossil scorpions.

From “A Restudy of the Fossil Scorpionida of the World“

VITA

Erik Norman Kjellesvig-Waering was born in Habana, Cuba on February 9, 1912; his mother being Cuban and father Norwegian made him a Norwegian citizen by law, a “Cubegian” by nature and at age 21 when he became an American citizen-a 1000% extremely patriotic American. His father was a civil engineer who paved the streets of Habana with cobble stones from Norway.

He was one of six children, all educated in the United States at their mother’s insistence. Commuting from Cuba, he received his elementary education in New Jersey from the age of eight; attended High School in a military academy in North Carolina and received his Bachelor of Science Degree in Geology from the University of North Carolina.

His father sat him on a stump in a little woods in New Jersey at the age of 5, and told him to be a geologist. He said he would either be the best or the worst, no matter what he chose, as Erik was never mediocre or neutral or middle of the road, even at that tender age.

While working on his degree at the University, he supplemented his income with employment at the University library. During private research in connection with his geology courses, he became fascinated with paleontology, in fact so infatuated that during the remainder of his life, he devoted all his free time including vacations, to the study of paleontology, specifically eurypterids and living and fossil scorpions.

He was a man of many talents; strong, of sharp mind, quick decisions, and deep determination in all things he deemed to be right, a lover and student of history, biology, and ecology, and a champion of the underdog, with a flamboyant and energetic personality, punctuated always with a wonderful wit and sense of humor.

Over the period of his career he maintained an executive position in Exploration with various oil companies including DeGolyer MacNaughton, Inc. for whom he worked three years in Mexico; Helmerich & Payne, Inc. and Shell Oil Company in Oklahoma and Texas. He spent 23 years living and working in Cuba, Jamaica, Guatemala, Antigua, Venezuela, Argentina, Trinidad, Norway and Mozambique for Amoco International Oil Company. During this time he collected various turtles, snakes, shellfish, coral and other specimens for the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, being a member of both.

He owned one of the largest and most varied private collections of Scorpionida in the world, which now rests with his extensive collection of Coleoptera and eurypterids in the Florida State Collection of Arthropods.
He spent 20 years writing this monograph while figuring prominently in the field of geology with the oil industry and writing many other papers pertaining to eurypterids and fossil and living scorpions, gathering a great deal of pertinent material in person in museums and universities behind the Iron Curtain, Europe, the Caribbean, Central, South and North America, Southeast Asia and Africa. All descriptions and figures were obtained from the actual specimens either loaned to him by universities, museums and individuals, or collected by him in his extensive travels.

During his fatal illness, he tried to finish this work and had just completed the figures and manuscript, but did not have time to organize the latter for publication. It was his request that his dear friend Dr. Kenneth E. Caster be the one to categorize and join together his last great work.

At the time of his death, July 16, 1979, he was living in Marco Island, Florida where he had retired from the oil business. He left his wife Virginia, two sons, Richard and Ronald and two grandchildren, Kristen and Keith.

Description of Titanoscorpio douglassi.

GENERA INCERTAE SEDIS
Genus TITANOSCORPIO, new genus

Very large scorpions with pedipalp having very short hand, both fingers curved inward, concave along the inner edge, and not joining along the edges. Edge armed with single (?) row of small denticles, at least on the distal part. The distal ends of both fingers hooklike. Tibia very short.

Type species. – Titanoscorpio douglassi, n. gen., n. sp.

Geological range. – Carboniferous of the Mazon Creek area of Illinois.

Remarks. – Although it is not possible to determine the family to which this unusual scorpion should be delegated, there is no doubt that on the generic level it is distinct. Unique morphological structures are found in the two long, hooklike terminations of the pedipalp fingers, as well as the opposable concavity of both fingers. In other scorpions, the fixed finger fits against the free one. The presence of very small denticles along the edge of the fingers, although well-known in various living scorpions, is an uncommon character in Palaeozoic scorpions. It would appear that the pedipalp would have a scissorlike action in closing, rather than that of nearly all scorpions where pressure is caused by the fitting of the curved or concave free finger against the convex fixed finger.

The size of this scorpion rivals that of Gigantoscorpio willsi Størmer and Eoscorpius carbonarius Meek and Worthen (see above, description of a new and very large specimen of the chela of a pedipalp, FMNH (PE) 32083, No. H-19 in the Herdina collection). A scorpion with pedipalps of this size would probably reach 30 cm in body length. The short tibia suggests that this was a burrowing scorpion, although the size of the scorpion indicates a water-dweller, as is the case with nearly all of the Mazon Creek scorpions.

Titanoscorpio douglassi, new species
Text-figure 108

DLD Specimen I.- Holotype: Specimen in the personal collection of David Lyon Douglass, Western Springs, Illinois, consisting of three parts of an iron-stone concretion showing ventral and dorsal sides of the chela and attached femur of the pedipalp, as well as a small piece of the inner filling representing the distal part of the free finger.

Type information.- Pennsylvanian, Francis Creek Shale of the Mazon Creek area, Illinois, collected by David Lyon Douglass, 1966.

The chela of the pedipalp comprises a wide, nearly quadrate hand, without any discernible ornamentation. The free finger is curved inward, convex rather than concave as in other Pennsylvanian scorpions, and is decidedly hooklike. The edge of the free finger contains at least one row of small, rather blunt denticles and presumably the same occur on the fixed finger, as in other scorpions. No pitting or other ornamentation was noted on the fingers.

The femur is very short, stout and subrectangular in general shape.

Derivatio nominis. – The species has been named in honor of the collector.

RC Specimen II. – Paratype: Specimen in the collection of Richard X. Cramer (1435 Marengo Ave., Forest Park, IL 60130, U.S.A.), collected August, 1975, in Pit 11, Will County, Illinois.

The paratype consists of the right humerus (P3) of the pedipalp. It is very stout, short, with only one superior carina on the posterior dorsal side. Socket for articulation of the brachium is present midway at the distal end. A raised area is present at the conjunction with the trochanter (see Text-fig. 108H), which would be overlain by the latter joint. The length of humerus is 21.8 mm, and the width is 20.0 mm. The paratype is smaller than the holotype, although still a formidable scorpion about 20 cm long. Little is left of the original skin.

DLD Specimen III. – Paratype: Specimen illustrated in Text-figures 108A-E, labelled on the back of the drawing “Bartowski Collection, write Gene Richardson” and accredited to the private collection of David Lyon Douglass in the figure description.

Michele Micetich at the Carbon Hill School Museum has this newspaper clipping from the Kankakee Daily Journal on December 23rd, 1987.

Fossil finder’s Coal City find named after him

CHICAGO (AP) – Though most people may wish for bright, shiny and new Christmas gifts, Dave Douglass would like to suggest sornething dusty, crusty and old – say, 250 million years old.

Fossils.
The 37-year-old Douglass collects them. He started when he was 8, and he became so avid about it he dropped out of Northwestern University to open the Down to Earth Rock Shop in suburban Evanston.

The pursuit of his passion has crystallized into the opening of the Prehistoric Life Museum this month in the basement of his shop. Its attractions include 9-inch-long cockroaches and dragonflies with 27-inch wingspans.

Douglass even made a find that was named after him a 250 million-year-old scorpion now called Titanoscorpio Douglassi – whose four-inch claw Douglass discovered while on an outing with his parents in 1966 in Coal City.
Can something as timeless as fossils have a place in something as transitory as the Christmas shopping season?

You bet.

“Our busiest time of year is just prior to Christmas,” Douglass said Monday. “All the way up to the time we close on Christmas Eve, we do a tremendous business.”

Besides selling and swapping fossils, Douglass purveys presents to appeal to the non-paleontologist – rock bookends, rock letter openers and rock dishes, for example. There also are decorative rock carvings.

He and his wife, Sandra, spend about three months of the year in the field collecting. Though most of their adventures are in the United States, he has been on expedition in Morocco and gone looking for dinosaurs in Alberta and for ancient flora and fauna in Mexico.

“I exchange fossils with people all over the world, museums, private collectors, dealers,” Douglass said.

“A lot of times fossils are so unique that people won’t sell them for any amount of money, but if you have a fossil they want, they’ll exchange,” he added with a chuckle.

Though potential fossil beds are losing ground to mining, development and the continued spread of civilization, collecting specimens is “not a disappearing hobby,” Douglass said.

He confesses to having a thing for fossils called “trilobites,” an extinct arthropod whose closest 20th century counterpart would be the horseshoe crab.

Douglass says he has a lot of company in his fascination with the creatures, which lived all over the world from 600 million years ago to 200 million years ago.

“They were the dominant animal on earth for 150 million to 200 million years,” he said.

Photos

These photos are hosted on Andrew Young’s amazing Mazon Creek pages.