DEVELOPMENT OF PALEOBOTANY IN THE ILLINOIS BASIN 5 



"West, " Schoolcraft was guided by an Indian to a petrified log in the bed of the 

 Des Plaines River, just above its junction with the Kankakee. 



The horizontal log was partly embedded in a gray sandstone and had a 

 coaly outer layer and a brown center; it was 51 feet long and 2 J feet in diameter 

 It was petrified in a matrix of calcite and pyrite. 



David Dale Owen 



Scottish- born David Dale Owen, a physician and scientist with broad 

 training, first discovered and reported fossil plants from the Pennsylvanian rocks 

 in the Indiana portion of the Illinois Basin (Owen, 1843a, b) . He found many tree 

 trunk casts in upright positions in a shale along a creek bank in Posey County 

 near New Harmony; they were erroneously interpreted as fossil palm trees, which 

 are not known from Paleozoic time . 



David Owen was the son of Robert Owen, who had established a communal 

 settlement in Scotland and one in New Harmony. David Owen came to America in 

 1828 and completed his medical training. However, he then turned to geological 

 work in Tennessee (Merrill, 1904) and in 1837 became the first State Geologist of 

 Indiana. He became State Geologist of Kentucky in 1854 and later filled a similar 

 post in Arkansas, where he called in Leo Lesquereux to study the coal flora. In 

 1859, upon returning to Indiana as State Geologist, he brought Lesquereux to 

 study the fossil plants of that state (Lesquereux, 1862b, 1875). Lesquereux had 

 established his competence with an outstanding study of Carboniferous plants for 

 the Rogers (the first) Survey in Pennsylvania. Canright (1958) has presented a 

 detailed background on the Owen family. 



A. H. Worthen 



Although the first Geological Survey of Illinois was established in 1851 

 with J. G. Norwood as State Geologist (Rolfe, 1931), paleobotanical studies did 

 not begin in Illinois until 1858, when A. H. Worthen succeeded Norwood. Wor- 

 then collected invertebrate and plant fossils, which he used to establish a strat- 

 igraphic zonation. Although he published only a short article on plants of Missis- 

 sippian age (Worthen, 1860), Worthen encouraged studies of paleobotany and pro- 

 vided most of the fossils. Worthen tried to persuade Lesquereux to accept a year- 

 round position for the systematic study of the Mississippian and Pennsylvanian 

 plants of Illinois, but Lesquereux instead began his study of the fossil plants of 

 Indiana for Owen. Later, however, Lesquereux did study Illinois fossil plants. 



Leo Lesquereux 



Leo Lesquereux is a splendid example of a versatile scientist who made 

 significant contributions in several areas. Of French descent and Swiss birth, 

 Lesquereux was successively a school teacher, a watch engraver, a maker of 

 watch springs, a student of mosses, and an expert on peat bogs (Rodgers, 1944) 

 An accident and an ensuing illness that resulted in his loss of hearing had 



