A Century of Progress in Paleobotany in Kansas

Abstract

climbs in elevation, but one also climbs, figuratively speaking, the geologic time scale. oldest outcroppings are of Mississippian age (Lower Carboniferous) and occur only in the extreme southeastern corner of the state. Most of the eastern fourth of Kansas is Pennsylvanian (Upper Carboniferous) in age. Flint Hills and adjoining areas to the west, including the Red Beds of southcentral Kansas, are Permian. Cretaceous deposits are represented by a broad area in northcentral Kansas and include fingerings westward along several rivers, notably the Smoky Hill, representing the world-famous chalk deposits with their remarkable animal fossils, mostly fish and reptile. so-called High Plains of western Kansas are chiefly Tertiary and Pleistocene in age (Fig. 1). All of these strata, with the possible exception of the Mississippian, have yielded a rich variety of fossils, both plant and animal. Perhaps the first person to scientifically investigate the fossil flora of Kansas was Charles Sternberg, who, along with his son George, is far more greatly reknowned for his extensive animal collections in the Cretaceous chalk. Sternberg was not a trained scientist himself but rather a collector-and an extremely courageous, avid, and careful one. Museums throughout the world owe many of their prized specimens to his dogged persistence in the face of hostile climate, sickness, lack of money, and primitive equipment and transportation. His paleobotanical collections in about 1870 were limited to the Dakota Sandstone (Cretaceous), chiefly in Ellsworth County, and consisted of many hundreds of excellent specimens of angiosperm leaves. Most of these were subsequently delivered to Leo Lesquereux, who also did some collecting himself in the area, culminating in two extensive publications, The Cretaceous (Lesquereux, 1874) and The Flora of the Dakota Group (Lesquereux, 1892), the latter being published five years after the author's death and being by far the more important and pertinent of the two. Upper Cretaceous Dakota flora remains as one of the world's most extensive, and its description is certainly the first major milestone in Kansas paleobotany. David White and E. H. Sellards were the first to investigate the