The Great Fossil Enigma (58 page)

16.
E. O. Ulrich and R. S. Bassler, “A classification of the toothlike fossils, conodonts, with description of American Devonian and Mississippian species,”
Proc. U.S. National Mus.
68 (1926): 1–63; R. S. Bassler, “Classification and stratigraphic use of the conodonts,”
Bull. Geol. Soc. Am.
36 (1925): 218–20. Also R. S. Bassler, “The stratigraphic use of conodonts (abstract),”
Washington Academy Sci. J.
16 (1926): 72–73.

17.
Grace. B. Holmes, “A bibliography of the conodonts with descriptions of early Mississippian species,”
Proc. U.S. National Mus.
72 (1928). Holmes was directed by Ulrich and Bassler and thus serves to backup their conclusions.

18.
Clarice B. Strachan, “Biographical sketches of recently elected honorary members: Edward Oscar Ulrich,”
Bull.
AAPG
20 (1936): 1265–68. But note that Roundy had already drawn up his own “Bibliography of conodont and Paleozoic annelid jaw literature in
USGS
Library, Reston,” in 1925 in the knowledge that these fossils would prove important to the oil industry.

19.
C. R. Stauffer, “Conodonts from the Decorah shale,” J.
Paleant.
4 (1930): 121–28; C. R. Stauffer, “Decorah Shale conodonts from Kansas,” J.
Paleant. 6
(1932): 257–64; C. R. Stauffer and H. J. Plummer, “Texas Pennsylvanian conodonts and their stratigraphic relations,”
Univ. Texas Bull.
3201 (1932): 13–50. Helen Plummer (neé Skewes) was married to Frederick Byron Plummer.

20.
F. H. Gunnell, “Conodonts from the Fort Scott limestone of Missouri,”
J. Paleont.
5 (1931): 244–52.

21.
F. H. Gunnell, “Conodonts and fish remains from the Cherokee, Kansas City, and Wabaunsee groups of Missouri and Kansas,”
J. Paleont.
7 (1933): 261–97.

22.
C. L. Cooper, “Arkansas”; C. L. Cooper, “New conodonts from the Wood-ford Formation of Oklahoma,” J.
Paleant.
5 (1931): 230–43.

23.
Carl Rexroad told me he was known as “Ted”; Rexroad received a cowboy belt from Branson when a child. C. R. Longwell, “Edwin Bayer Branson (1877–1950),”
Bull.
AAPG
35 (1951): 1706–10; S. P. Ellison, “Memorial for Maurice Goldsmith Mehl (1877–1966),”
Proc.
GSA
(1966): 219–24; C. C. Branson, “Maurice G. Mehl (1887–1966),”
Oklahoma Geol. Notes
26 (1966): 139–40.

24.
E. B. Branson and M. G. Mehl,
Conodont Studies
(Columbia: University of Missouri Studies 8, 1933–34), 8. I have not listed the individual papers below.

25.
Their paranoia was not helped when Stauffer showed them old yet unworn conodonts – “delicate, sharp-pointed, hand-like crests with the fibrous structure” – mixed with a younger fauna that was considerably more worn! C. R. Stauffer, “Conodonts of the Glenwood Beds,”
Bull. Geol. Soc. Am.
46 (1935): 125–68.

26.
C. R. Stauffer, “The conodont fauna of the Decorah shale (Ordovician),”
J. Paleont.
9 (1935): 596–620.

27.
C. L. Cooper, “Review of Conodont studies,” J.
Geol.
43 (1935): 443–45.

28.
J. W. Huddle, “Marine fossils from the top of the New Albany shale of Indiana,”
Am. J. Sci.
25 (1933): 303–14; J. W. Huddle, “Conodonts from the New Albany shale of Indiana,”
Bull. Am. Paleont.
21 (1934).

29.
C. L. Cooper, “Conodonts from the Upper and Middle Arkansas Novaculite, Mississippian, at Caddo Gap, Arkansas,”
J. Paleont.
9 (1935): 307–15.

30.
E. B. Branson and M. G. Mehl, “The conodont genus
Icriodus
and its stratigraphic distribution,”
J. Paleont.
12 (1938): 156–66.

31.
M. M. Knechtel and W. H. Hass, “Kinderhook conodonts from Little Rocky Mountains, northern Montana,”
J. Paleont.
12 (1938): 518–20, 520; E. B. Branson and M. G. Mehl, “New and little known Carboniferous conodont genera,”
J. Paleont.
15 (1941): 97–106; Wilbert H. Hass (1906–1959); C. C. Branson, c.1962;
Geol. Soc. Am. Proc. for 1960
(1962): 104–106; C. R. Stauffer, “Conodonts of the Olentangy shale,”
J. Paleont.
12 (1938): 411–43.

32.
C. L. Cooper, “Conodonts from a Bushberg-Hannibal horizon in Oklahoma,”
J. Paleont.
13 (1939): 379–422; W. H. Hass, “Corrections to the Kinderhook conodont fauna, Little Rocky Mountains, Montana,”
J. Paleont.
17 (1943): 307–309.

33.
Branson and Mehl, “New and little known,” 97.

34.
C. C. Branson, “Conodonts in the Permian,”
Science
75 (1932): 337–38; C. C. Branson, “Origin of phosphate in the Phosphoria Formation (abstract),”
Bull. Geol. Soc. Am.
43 (1932): 284. This discovery was widely publicized at the time. E. B. Branson and M. G. Mehl, “The recognition and interpretation of mixed conodont faunas,”
Denison University Bull. Jour. Sci. Lab.
35 (1941): 195–209. Ellison makes much of the importance of this work in his obituaries of Mehl. E. B. Branson and M. G. Mehl, “A record of typical American conodont genera in various parts of Europe,”
Denison University Bull. Jour. Sci. Lab.
35 (1941): 189–94.

35.
W. M. Furnish, “Conodonts from the Prairie du Chien (Lower Ordovician) beds of the upper Mississippi Valley,”
J. Paleont.12
(1938): 318–40, 323; W. M. Furnish, E. J. Barragy, and A. K. Miller, “Ordovician fossils from upper part of type section of Deadwood Formation, South Dakota,”
Bull.
AAPG
20 (1936): 1329–41; William Madison Furnish (b. 1912); Arthur K. Miller (b. 1902).

36.
S. P. Ellison Jr., “Revision of the Pennsylvanian conodonts,”
J. Paleont.
15 (1941): 107–43.

37.
E. B. Branson and M. G. Mehl, “Conodonts,” in H. W. Shimer and R. R. Shrock (eds.),
Index of Fossils of North America
(New York: Wiley, 1944), 235–46.

38.
S. P. Ellison Jr., “Conodonts as Paleozoic guide fossils,”
Bull.
AAPG
30 (1946): 93–110.

39.
W. H. Hass, “Conodont zones in Upper Devonian and Lower Mississippian formations of Ohio,”
J. Paleont.
21 (1947): 131–41.

40.
Gil Klapper, pers. comm.. 16 October 2005; W. H. Hass, “Conodonts of the Barnett Formation of Texas,”
U.S. Geol. Surv. Prof. Pap.
243–F (1953): 69–94; Hass, “Chattanooga”; W. H. Hass, “Conodonts from the Chappel Limestone of Texas,” U.S.
Geol. Surv. Prof. Pap.
294–J (1959): 365–99. The latter paper included a new utilitarian classification of the conodonts that he said he first proposed in 1941.

41.
Branson, “Ellison.”

42.
Croneis, “Micropaleontology,” 1233.

43.
A. N. Dusenbury, “Brooks Fleming Ellis (1897–1976),”
Micropaleontology
22 (1976): 4, 377–78. Also “The Micropale ontology Press,”
http://micropress.org/history.html/
.

44.
Taken from the Boy Scout Geology Merit Badge Cooper helped develop. Houston Geology Society, “Petroleum Geology and the Development of the Boy Scout Geology Merit Badge,” 2004,
http://www.hgs.org/en/articles/printview.asp?48/
.

45.
N. D. Newell, “Towards a more ample invertebrate paleontology,” in B. Kummel (ed.), “Status of Invertebrate Paleontology,”
Bull. Mus. of Comparative Zool.
112 (1954): 93–97; T. J. M. Schopf,
Models in Paleobiology
(San Francisco: Freeman, Cooper, 1972), 10.

46.
G. A. Cooper, “The science of paleontology,”
J. Paleont.
32 (1958): 1010–18; Sweet recalls Cooper as a gloomy pessimist. Sweet, pers. comm., 16 July 2010.

3. THE ANIMAL WITH THREE HEADS

1.
Carl Branson to James Steele Williams, 6 November 1948,
SIA
, Record Unit 7328, Box 1, Folder 3, Carl Branson Folder, James Steele Williams Papers (hereafter cited as Williams Papers); Croneis, “Micro paleontology,” 1242 (see ch. 2, n. 3); H. G. Schenck, “The biostratigraphy aspect of micropaleontology,”
J. Paleont.
2 (1928): 158–65.

2.
Stauffer and Plummer, “Texas Pennsylvanian,” 16 (see ch. 2, n. 19); a view also given by Bryant, “Genesee” (see ch. 2, n. 14); R. S. Bassler, “Bibliographic Index of American Ordovician and Silurian Fossils,
Bull. U.S. National Mus.
92 (1915): 1426.

3.
Bryant, “Genesee,” 3, 6, 12, 24.

4.
J. M. Macfarlane,
The Quantity and Sources of Our Petroleum Supplies: A Review and a Criticism
(Philadelphia: Noel Printing, 1931), 227 admits to copying Hinde.

5.
J. M. Macfarlane,
Evolution and Distribution of Fishes
(Burlington, N. J.: Enterprise, 1923); J. M. Macfarlane,
Fishes the Source of Petroleum
(New York: Macmillan, 1923). For more recent review, R. Jenner, “Foiling vertebrate inversion with the humble nemertean,”
Paleont. Assoc. Newsletter
58 (2005): 32–39; R. Jenner, “Meeting a nemertean nemesis,”
Paleont. Assoc. Newsletter
59 (2005): 37–43.

6.
Anonymous review of Macfarlane,
Quantity and Sources
, in
Nature
130 (1932): 832.

7.
Roundy to Cooper, 11 September 1929, Girty Papers.

8.
Branson to James Steele Williams, 26 October 1933, handwritten addendum, Box 1, Folder 4, Edwin Branson Folder, Williams Papers.

9.
C. L. Cooper, “Actinopterygian jaws from the Mississippian black shales of the Mississippi Valley,”
J. Paleont.
10 (1936): 92–94.

10.
S. R Kirk, “Conodonts associated with the Ordovician fish fauna of Colorado – A preliminary note,”
Am. J. Sci.
18 (1929): 493–96; C. D. Walcott, “Preliminary notes on the discovery of a vertebrate fauna in Silurian (Ordovician) strata,”
Bull. Geol. Soc. Am.
3 (1892): 153–72.

11.
Branson and Mehl,
Conodont Studies
, 5 (see ch. 2, n. 24).

12.
Gunnell, “Cherokee,” 263 (see ch. 2, n. 21); F. H. Gunnell, “Conodonts in relation to petroleum,”
American Midland Naturalist
13 (1932): 324–25.

13.
Macfarlane,
Evolution and Distribution
, 260; Stauffer and Plummer, “Texas Pennsylvanian,” 22; Stauffer, “Conodonts from the Decorah shale,” 258.

14.
W. Eichenberg, “Conodonten aus dem Culm des Harzes,”
Palaeont. Z.
12 (1930): 177–82.

15.
H. Schmidt, “Condonten-Funde in ursprunglichen Zusammenhang,”
Palaeont. Z.
16 (1934): 76–85.

16.
Harold William Scott (1906–1998), PhD completed in 1935.

17.
“The life of Harold W. and Joann Scott, Urbana, Ill.,” University of Illinois Archives, Box 6, Harold Scott Papers (hereafter cited as Scott Papers).

18.
H. W. Scott, “The zoological relationships of the conodonts,”
J. Paleont.
8 (1934): 448–55, 450.

19.
Croneis and Scott published three abstracts in
Bull. Geol. Soc. Am.
44 (1933): 207–208. Stauffer was also expert in this field and is recorded in the same volume.

20.
D. J. Jones, “Conodont assemblages from the Nowata shale,” master's thesis, (University of Oklahoma, 1935) and reported under the same title in
J. Paleont.
9 (1935): 364; R. L. Denham, “Conodonts,”
J. Paleont.
18 (1944): 216–18.

21.
F. B. Loomis, “Are conodonts gastropods?”
J. Paleont.
10 (1936): 663–64; H. A. Pilsbry, “Are conodonts molluscan teeth?”
Nautilus
50 (1937): 101.

22.
On anti-German sentiments in the early 1930s, G. C. Cadée, “The history of taphonomy,” in S. K. Donovan (ed.),
The Processes of Fossilization
(London: Belhaven, 1991), 3–21; Stauffer, “Conodont fauna of the Decorah,” 599; E. B. Branson and M. G. Mehl, “Conodont assemblages (abstract),”
Geol. Soc. Am. Proc. for 1937
(1938): 270; E. B. Branson and M. G. Mehl, “Geological affinities and taxonomy of conodonts,”
Geol. Soc. Am. Proc. for
1935 (1936): 436.

23.
F. Demanet, “Filtering appendices on the branchial arches of
Coelacanthus lepturus
Agassiz,”
Geol. Mag.
76 (1939) : 215–19.

24.
E. D. Currie, C. Duncan, and H. M. Muirwood, “The fauna of Skipsey's Marine Band,”
Trans. Geol. Soc. Glasgow
19 (1937): 413–51.

25.
J. S. Cullison, “Dutchtown fauna of southeastern Missouri,”
J. Paleont.12
(1938): 219–28. The fossil was named
Archeognathus.
It was confirmed as a fish by A. K. Miller, J. S. Cullison, and W. Youngquist, “Lower Ordovician fish-remains from Missouri,”
Am. J. Sci.
245 (1947): 31–34, and denied by Lindström in 1964. An attempt to reestablish significance in G. Klapper and S. M. Bergström, “The enigmatic Middle Cambrian fossil
Archeognathus
and its relations to conodonts and vertebrates,”
J. Paleont.
58 (1984): 949–76. Bergström (pers. comm., 2011) notes: “I do not think any informed conodont worker would now regard the conodont nature
of Archeognathus
as controversial.”

26.
Jones to Scott, 11 May 1937, General Correspondence, 1937, Scott Papers; D. J. Jones,
The Conodont Fauna of the Seminole Formation of Oklahoma
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1941), announced in an abstract in
Oil and Gas Journal
37 (1939): 74; Gertrude I. Burnley, “The conodonts of the shale overlying the Lexington Coal Bed of Lafayette County and Jackson County,” master's thesis (University of Missouri–Columbia, 1938).