38 ILLINOIS STATE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY CIRCULAR 480 



acquired for the Botryopteris study by Phillips (19 61) . Out of this collection came a 

 specimen of Botryoptevis triseota that showed the osmunda-like habit of the plant. 

 A specimen of Catenoptevis simplex also was found (Phillips and Andrews, 19 66) . 



Delevoryas and Henry W. Harris, a former army demolitionist who always 

 collected with the paleobotanists from Urbana, later applied dynamite to the Ber- 

 ryville outcrop. Bulldozing was again effectively used at Berryville by Phillips 

 and Stidd and later by Taylor and Eggert, who added the use of a jack hammer in 

 the late 1960s. 



Collections were also made by Schopf and Kosanke south of Danville, Illi- 

 nois, on the Little Vermilion River. With Cady and Simon they also visited a new 

 locality, the Pyramid Mine in the Herrin (No. 6) Coal in southern Illinois. Schopf 

 wrote of this, "Nearly the whole bed had been permineralized and good plant ma- 

 terial was abundant. I know the Illinois Survey got a couple truck loads and I 

 collected about 600 pounds. " As a result of these collections and others from 

 outside the basin, Schopf brought together at the U.S. Geological Survey one of 

 the most significant coal-ball collections in the United States. 



Since Schopf s 1948 visit, two important localities of coal balls have been 

 found in the No. 6 Coal. The Sahara Coal Company No. 6 Mine near Carrier Mills, 

 Illinois, has yielded the largest number of coal balls with well preserved plants. 

 Subsequent studies of the plants have greatly expanded our knowledge of the No. 

 6 Coal flora, and it and the Calhoun Coal flora are the best known coal-ball 

 floras in the Illinois Basin. Some coal balls were collected by M. E. Hopkins, 

 Head of the Illinois Geological Survey's Coal Section, and R. A. Peppers, Survey 

 paleobotanist, in the Peabody Eagle Mine No. 2 near Shawneetown, Illinois, dur- 

 ing the excavation of the pit in the summer of 1967. Upon returning to the pit in 

 the summer of 1968, they discovered vast quantities of coal balls, probably the 

 largest mass occurrence of coal balls encountered in the Illinois Basin. Large 

 collections were obtained from the area by the University of Illinois at Urbana, 

 Western Illinois University at Macomb, Eastern Illinois University at Charleston, 

 the Survey, and by Leisman from Kansas State Teachers College. The massive 

 coal-ball zones had been anticipated prior to stripping operations when drill cores, 

 studied by Kosanke, Simon, and Smith (1958), revealed coal balls replacing the 

 coal in 9 of the total 10 .2- foot thickness. The coal is normally about 3 feet thick 

 in the area, but compaction is markedly less in the massive coal-ball deposits. 



More recent discoveries of coal balls from coals in the Illinois part of the 

 basin include one from the Banner Mine near Peoria, reported by Damberger of the 

 Illinois Survey (in Smith et al., 1970), from the Colchester (No. 2) Coal, which 

 rarely contains coal balls; one in the Summum (No. 4) Coal in pit 14 of the Pea- 

 body Northern Illinois Mine at South Wilmington; and several massive aggregates 

 of coal-ball material discovered in the Friendsville Coal near Allendale by Roger 

 Nance of the Survey. 



One of the significant coal-ball localities in the Kentucky portion of the 

 basin was visited in 1962 by J. A. Simon and W. H. Smith of the Illinois Geolog- 

 ical Survey just west of Providence, Kentucky, where the Hart and Hart Coal Com- 

 pany operated. The coal-ball aggregates were exposed near an undisturbed hill 

 surrounded by strip-mined land. The precise correlation of the "Baker" coal in 

 which the coal balls were found is not known, but it is apparently between the 

 Herrin (No. 6) and Danville (No. 7) Coals of Illinois. The flora contains abundant 

 Sphenophyllum and a number of genera such asStelastellara and Schopfiastrum, 

 which were not previously known from the Illinois Basin. 



