Name: Betulites:
B. oblongus, B. obtusus, B.rotundatus; Daphnophyllum dakotensis, Rhamus
inaeuilateralis, Viburnum lesquereauxii
Geologic
Time: Upper Cretaceous
Size (25.4
mm = 1 inch): Nodules vary from 23 mm by 39 mm to 25 mm by 72 mm
Fossil Site:
Dakota Sandstone, Ellsworth County, Kansas
Code: Sternberg
Collection
Price: $995.00
Description:
Description: This is a most unique opportunity to own a piece of
paleontological history. These specimens were collected by Charles
Hazelius Sternberg in 1897 and are part of a collection sold to
the University of Iowa in 1898 for then then-munificent sum of $350.
Charles H. Sternberg was the patriarch of a family of commercial
fossil collectors who with his sons Charlie, George, and Eli dominated
the scene for commercial collecting for upwards of 100 years. Charles
H. got his commercial start with a $300 check from Edward Drinker
Cope, and collected for both him and Cope’s archrival O. C.
Marsh for several years. He and his sons supplied many scientific
institutions with specimens over the years. To me, the family’s
crowning achievements were the discovery of a pair of Hadrosaur
“mummies”, one
of which is on display in the American Museum of Natural History,
New York, and the Senckenberg Museum, Frankfurt, Germany. Their
most famous specimen, however, is inarguably the Fish-Within-A-Fish
on display at the Sternberg Museum in Hays, Kansas which shows a
4 meter Xiphactinus with a 2 meter Gillicus contained within its
stomach. George started collecting plant nodules much like these
before he was 20, and over the years both donated and sold many
specimens to museums worldwide. These were collected by Sternberg
himself, hand-prepared to trim the nodules, and then carefully placed
in relief using a fine pin. Interestingly, Sternberg never kept
any for himself, preferring that they be distributed to institutions
worldwide to further the cause of Science. These specimens were
de-acessioned in the 1960s, and passed into private hands. Hopefully,
the lucky collector who obtains them will treasure them as much
as Sternberg himself did both for their beauty and their historical
significance to paleontology.
Ref: Sternberg, Charles H. The Life of a Fossil
Hunter, 1909, pp 25 ff.
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