DEVELOPMENT OF PALEOBOTANY IN THE ILLINOIS BASIN 51 



dent of Harlan P. Banks at Cornell University and has shifted his research interest 

 from Devonian plants to younger ones available in southern Illinois and adjacent areas. 



CRETACEOUS PALEOBOTANY 



Well preserved Cretaceous plants, including petrified wood and leaf cuti- 

 cles, have been illustrated by Matten (1971). Of his research in Cretaceous 

 Studies Matten wrote, 



My work on the Cretaceous plants of southern Illinois started with sev- 

 eral field trips about three years ago. Dave Dilcher indicated that E. W. 

 Berry had found angiosperms in the clays of southern Illinois. A careful 

 search of the publications of the State Geological Survey turned up a 

 number of localities where Upper Cretaceous (Gulfian Series) and Tertiary 

 clays occur. I was actually hoping to find a locality or two to take my 

 paleobotany class to instead of having to journey down to Tennessee. 

 Well, we found a number of productive localities for leaves, lignitized 

 wood, and silicified wood. I am also hoping to isolate pollen and spores 

 from the clays. The flora is extensive, diverse, and is preserved in a 

 number of ways, allowing for a complete paleobotanical study. The fact 

 that there was no one working on this material and the huge collection of 

 petrified woods led me to start working on it. 



Robert H. Tschudy, palynologist with the U. S. Geological Survey, Den- 

 ver, also has been working with material from the Mississippi Embayment. In 

 1970 he described two new pollen genera in Cretaceous and Paleocene strata, one 

 sample of which is from the McNairy Formation in Massac County, Illinois. 



PLEISTOCENE PALEOBOTANY 



The first surge of interest in Pleistocene paleobotany came in the last cen- 

 tury with the recognition that wood, seeds, and spores could be found in glacial 

 deposits. Winchell (1876) and Penhallow (1892) described finds of twigs, cones, 

 and woods, and Baker (1912) mentioned plant megafossils in connection with mol- 

 lusks in lake deposits. When a tunnel was built in the last century to supply 

 Chicago with water from Lake Michigan, unusual round bodies of microscopic size 

 were found in the till at the excavation site. These bodies turned up for a consid- 

 erable time in the water supply of the city. Finally, Johnson and Thomas (1884) 

 and Dawson (1885) interpreted them properly as reworked Devonian spore-like 

 bodies (Tasmanites) in Pleistocene tills. 



Fungi, preserved in woods, were described from the Manito Bog by Tehon 

 (1938) and from gravels at Ashmore, Illinois, by Galbreath (1947), who also de- 

 scribed gymnosperms and angiosperms from that locality. 



The first analytical studies of pollen from the Pleistocene in the Illinois 

 Basin were made in the 1930s from more than 15 localities (Voss, 1933, 1934, 1937, 

 1939; Artist, 1936; Fuller, 1939). More recent studies have been made by Griffin 

 (1952), Kaeiser and Harris (1958), and Smith and Kapp (1964) that indicated the 

 migration of trees in post-Wisconsinan time in the northern half of Illinois. The 

 studies were criticized by Eberhard Griiger (19 70): "These investigations do not 

 meet modern standards, because either no non-arboreal pollen was counted, the 

 pollen sum was too small, or the sample levels were too widely spaced. " 



