DEVELOPMENT OF PALEOBOTANY IN THE ILLINOIS BASIN 9 



Foerste (1915) described Stigmaria- like specimens from the Kentucky por- 

 tion of the Illinois Basin, but their differences from other species of Stigmarialed 

 him to designate them a new genus, Dictyophlois . He described similar speci- 

 mens from Illinois (Foerste, 1923). White later gave the fossil its valid name, 

 Stigmaria wedingtonensis . The description of this Mississippian species was re- 

 vised by Pfefferkorn (1972) . Foerste was well known as an invertebrate paleon- 

 tologist, and his Dictyophlois papers are his only publications in paleobotany. 



PENNSYLVANIAN PALEOBOTANY AFTER 1920 



A. C. Noe 



Two events in the early 1920s started a new era for paleobotany in the 

 Illinois Basin — coal balls were discovered in the basin and A. C. Noe" became 

 the first professor of paleobotany at the University of Chicago. 



Austrian-born Adolph Carl Noe von Archenegg came to this country in 1899. 

 Noe had served as a demonstrator in paleobotany at the University of Graz, Aus- 

 tria, from 1893 to 1897 and had published two scientific papers. In America, how- 

 ever, he became a language teacher, completed work for his doctorate in Ger- 

 manic languages at the University of Chicago in 1905, and later joined the lan- 

 guage faculty there . 



Noe's great interest in fossil plants emerged professionally in the early 

 1920s when, at the age of 47, he began teaching a course in paleobotany at the 

 University of Chicago and secured support from the Illinois and Kentucky State 

 Geological Surveys for investigations of plants of Pennsylvanian age. He became 

 a colorful and articulate ambassador for paleobotany in the Illinois Basin. M. M. 

 Leighton, then Chief of the Illinois Survey, said of Noe's task (in Noe, 1925c): 



In 1921, in connection with an intensive study of the coal resources of 

 Illinois, the State Geological Survey undertook a program of more detailed 

 study of the plant forms found in strata associated with the coal beds, 

 fully realizing that the facts to be uncovered by such an investigation 

 would likely be of inestimable value to a proper correlation of the coal 

 beds in different parts of our State and to our knowledge of their extent 

 and relationships. 



As a result of Noe's preliminary studies and his effective communication 

 of his ideas, the University of Chicago in 1923 created a chair of paleobotany, 

 jointly sponsored by the university's Botany and Geology Departments, and Noe* 

 was transferred from the language faculty to fill the post. It was the first faculty 

 appointment for a paleobotanist in the Illinois Basin. Indeed, there were relative- 

 ly few chairs of paleobotany in the entire United States at that time. 



Both the Mazon Creek compression- impression plant fossils and coal balls 

 were intensively studied by Noe* in the twenties. To collect fossils for study, he 

 visited coal mines in the Illinois Basin and made friends with the mine operators, 

 amateur collectors, and miners. He became a familiar figure at the mines and 

 the miners called him "the flower man." James M. Schopf of the U. S. Geological 

 Survey Coal Geology Laboratory at Columbus, Ohio, who was a pioneer in many 

 branches of paleobotany in the Illinois Basin, wrote concerning Professor Noe: 



