Post by Fossilman on Mar 28, 2009 7:25:43 GMT -5
Family harvests wealth of Montana's paleontological history
By ED KEMMICK
Of The Gazette Staff
LEWISTOWN - The basement of Larry Eichhorn's house isn't very large, but it's crammed with tens of millions of years' worth of Montana history.
He has arrowheads and spear points and mallet stones, a mammoth's tooth as large as a baseball mitt, chunks of petrified wood, the shell of a Cretaceous-era turtle and numerous plant, fish and crab fossils.
But mostly what he has, and what has made him a well-known figure in paleontological circles, is an enormous collection of ammonite fossils, the remnants of marine creatures that thrived in the shallow inland sea that once covered Montana.
In the Eichhorn family, he's hardly alone. Larry took up fossil collecting as a boy in Forsyth with his father, John, a railroad man. Larry's wife, Darlene, lived down the block from the Eichhorns as a girl, and she has been hunting fossils with Larry for most of her life. Larry's identical twin brother, Gary, who died in 1997, was also a dedicated collector, as are Larry and Darlene's daughters, Connie and Charlotte.
And though Larry Eichhorn tries to play down his knowledge, insisting that he is strictly an amateur with no background in geology or paleontology, scientists who have worked with him tell another story.
Ray Rogers, chairman of the Geology Department at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., said Eichhorn, to a degree unusual among amateur collectors, makes his specimens available for scientific study and is respected by professional paleontologists across the country.
Eichhorn also prepares his fossils himself, Rogers said, creating polished, finished specimens worthy of exhibit in the British Museum of Natural History.
"The quality of preparation he's done in his basement is just crazy," Rogers said.
Another admirer is Bill Cobban, a 93-year-old Great Falls native and United States Geological Survey geologist-paleontologist who is considered a giant in the field. The Denver resident, who continues to research and publish, has named at least 214 species of ammonites, and he has had 17 species of invertebrates named after him.
Cobban has used Eichhorn's collection for his research on many occasions, but what he remembers most about Eichhorn is the gift he gave him years ago.
"He gave me a beautiful fossil that was named for me," Cobban said. "It is one of my treasures. He polished it and made virtually a gem out of it."
Neil Landman, an ammonite specialist with the American Museum of Natural History in New York, said he and Eichhorn "talk the same language."
"He's on a high plateau in terms of being able to talk to an expert on it," Landman said.
Rogers said the key might be that Eichhorn was for many years a wildlife and range biologist for the Bureau of Land Management in Lewistown. Though Eichhorn had no training in geology or paleontology, Rogers said, the study of ammonites is biology, too - "it's just ancient biology."
Rogers earned his doctorate studying vertebrate fossils in the Missouri Breaks, a project immeasurably helped along by the fact that Eichhorn, in his BLM position, had previously commissioned a study of vertebrate and invertebrate fossils in the Breaks.
"Larry wasn't just interested in ammonites," Rogers said. "He was interested in everything."
Rogers has continued to come to Montana for research almost every summer for nearly 20 years, and whenever he brings students with him, he makes sure they visit Eichhorn's basement.
There, Eichhorn's thousands of fossils are kept in display cases, glassed-in bookshelves, an oak cabinet with dozens of drawers and a tall cabinet originally used for storing maps. Elsewhere in the basement - on ordinary steel shelving, in file cabinets, on curtained-off shelves and in a spare room stuffed with cardboard boxes - are fossils that still need to be prepared with grinders, cutting tools and polishers.
Ancient history
The fossils come from the Western Interior Seaway, a great shallow sea that covered much of North America between 100 million and 70 million years ago. The seaway expanded and contracted over its life, but at its widest it extended from the Rocky Mountains to the western Appalachians.
Ammonites were a kind of mollusk, a squidlike creature that lived in a chambered shell. The closest living relative of the ammonite is the chambered nautilus. The classic ammonite has a coiled shell that looks like a ram's horn, which is why it was named after the Egyptian god Ammon, who was typically shown wearing such horns.
The baculite - Latin for "walking stick rock" - is essentially a vertical ammonite, resembling a petrified scabbard. Another common ammonite is loosely coiled and looks like a fossilized earthworm or snake, depending on the size. All ammonites raised and lowered themselves in the sea by filling the many chambers inside their shell with either air or water.
Some of Eichhorn's specimens are still coated with iridescent mother-of-pearl, but they are even more impressive when the mother-of-pearl is removed and the surfaces are polished. That brings out the beautiful, delicate patterns of the squiggly sutures that ran between the interior chambers. The patterns look something like coral, or like tiny leaves with frost-tinted edges.
Some of the ammonites are fingernail-size, but the Eichhorns have found some 2 and 3 feet in diameter. Ammonites lived and hunted in large schools, preferring algae-rich water more than 120 feet deep. The algae provided food for various marine animals, some of which were then eaten by the ammonites.
Larry Eichhorn said his father originally collected agates and Indian artifacts and then branched into fossils.
"I think it was to get us out and do something different as a family," he said, though back then "people thought you were nuts" if you were interested in fossils.
Eichhorn said he collected for years before he began studying up on ammonites, in the process assembling a nice little library of books, scientific papers and reference works. Beginning in the 1960s, he said, he began working with scientists and academics who made use of his collections. He has worked with researchers from Georgia Southern University, Kansas State, the University of Michigan, the University of Montana and the USGS, among other institutions.
Besides being important to scientists who study ammonites, the fossils are useful for a range of studies because they evolved relatively quickly into so many forms and are so widespread that they are a good "index fossil," used for dating the rock layer in which they are found and determining the age of other, rarer fossils.
An expert eye
Because he's made himself so knowledgeable and has worked with so many scientists, Rogers said, Eichhorn knows at a glance what is important and what is not, and he is careful to collect the kind of information scientists need about where the specimens were found and in what kind of material. Most important, he has a trained eye.
"He can find fossils like nobody," Rogers said.
Eichhorn's daughter, Connie, who lives in Livingston with her husband, Cecil Hoeme, is almost as proficient a fossil hunter as her father, though she doesn't pretend to have his scientific understanding. She and her husband have their own collection of ammonites, so large that when they built a new house, displaying their fossils was a prime consideration.
"We actually built the house around our collection," Connie said, creating a mini-museum in one room. Over the years they have often hosted groups of local students, and they have given some specimens to the Park County Museum, Park County High School and a Montessori school in Bozeman.
For all the Eichhorns' specialization in ammonites, it may seem odd that their most important finds have been extinct crabs. Three members of the family - Larry, Gary and Connie - have discovered new species of crab, Gary on the West Coast and Larry and Connie in Montana.
Gary had his find named after him and Connie will, too, after researchers are done studying it and publish papers on it. Larry has an autographed copy of the Journal of Paleontology article written about the two crab species he discovered, including the one named for him - Notopocorystes eichhorni.
Larry, in his habitually self-deprecating way, said it was nice to "have a name on something other than a tombstone."
Cecil Hoeme said he knew nothing about marine fossils until he met Connie, and learning under the tutelage of her father was like having his own private college professor.
"I never saw any of this until I was 40 years old," Hoeme said. "I was always out hunting and fishing, but I never had my eyes on the ground."
He finds it amazing to think that baculites might be the most common fossils in Montana, but few Montanans have ever seen one. Once you know where to look and how to look, he said, they're everywhere.
"It's incredible how many fossils are out there, and how many places there are to go," he said, pointing out that the motorcycle hill climb area south of Billings is classic Cretaceous marine formation, one teeming with fossils.
Cecil Hoeme said prospecting for fossils has opened his eyes not only to what's on the ground, but to what lies in Montana's distant past. Most people know nothing of the vast stretches of time that have shaped the landscape, he said.
"It's incredibly difficult to comprehend that," he said. "Most people can't comprehend that. But the story's in stone if you just want to read it."
By ED KEMMICK
Of The Gazette Staff
LEWISTOWN - The basement of Larry Eichhorn's house isn't very large, but it's crammed with tens of millions of years' worth of Montana history.
He has arrowheads and spear points and mallet stones, a mammoth's tooth as large as a baseball mitt, chunks of petrified wood, the shell of a Cretaceous-era turtle and numerous plant, fish and crab fossils.
But mostly what he has, and what has made him a well-known figure in paleontological circles, is an enormous collection of ammonite fossils, the remnants of marine creatures that thrived in the shallow inland sea that once covered Montana.
In the Eichhorn family, he's hardly alone. Larry took up fossil collecting as a boy in Forsyth with his father, John, a railroad man. Larry's wife, Darlene, lived down the block from the Eichhorns as a girl, and she has been hunting fossils with Larry for most of her life. Larry's identical twin brother, Gary, who died in 1997, was also a dedicated collector, as are Larry and Darlene's daughters, Connie and Charlotte.
And though Larry Eichhorn tries to play down his knowledge, insisting that he is strictly an amateur with no background in geology or paleontology, scientists who have worked with him tell another story.
Ray Rogers, chairman of the Geology Department at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., said Eichhorn, to a degree unusual among amateur collectors, makes his specimens available for scientific study and is respected by professional paleontologists across the country.
Eichhorn also prepares his fossils himself, Rogers said, creating polished, finished specimens worthy of exhibit in the British Museum of Natural History.
"The quality of preparation he's done in his basement is just crazy," Rogers said.
Another admirer is Bill Cobban, a 93-year-old Great Falls native and United States Geological Survey geologist-paleontologist who is considered a giant in the field. The Denver resident, who continues to research and publish, has named at least 214 species of ammonites, and he has had 17 species of invertebrates named after him.
Cobban has used Eichhorn's collection for his research on many occasions, but what he remembers most about Eichhorn is the gift he gave him years ago.
"He gave me a beautiful fossil that was named for me," Cobban said. "It is one of my treasures. He polished it and made virtually a gem out of it."
Neil Landman, an ammonite specialist with the American Museum of Natural History in New York, said he and Eichhorn "talk the same language."
"He's on a high plateau in terms of being able to talk to an expert on it," Landman said.
Rogers said the key might be that Eichhorn was for many years a wildlife and range biologist for the Bureau of Land Management in Lewistown. Though Eichhorn had no training in geology or paleontology, Rogers said, the study of ammonites is biology, too - "it's just ancient biology."
Rogers earned his doctorate studying vertebrate fossils in the Missouri Breaks, a project immeasurably helped along by the fact that Eichhorn, in his BLM position, had previously commissioned a study of vertebrate and invertebrate fossils in the Breaks.
"Larry wasn't just interested in ammonites," Rogers said. "He was interested in everything."
Rogers has continued to come to Montana for research almost every summer for nearly 20 years, and whenever he brings students with him, he makes sure they visit Eichhorn's basement.
There, Eichhorn's thousands of fossils are kept in display cases, glassed-in bookshelves, an oak cabinet with dozens of drawers and a tall cabinet originally used for storing maps. Elsewhere in the basement - on ordinary steel shelving, in file cabinets, on curtained-off shelves and in a spare room stuffed with cardboard boxes - are fossils that still need to be prepared with grinders, cutting tools and polishers.
Ancient history
The fossils come from the Western Interior Seaway, a great shallow sea that covered much of North America between 100 million and 70 million years ago. The seaway expanded and contracted over its life, but at its widest it extended from the Rocky Mountains to the western Appalachians.
Ammonites were a kind of mollusk, a squidlike creature that lived in a chambered shell. The closest living relative of the ammonite is the chambered nautilus. The classic ammonite has a coiled shell that looks like a ram's horn, which is why it was named after the Egyptian god Ammon, who was typically shown wearing such horns.
The baculite - Latin for "walking stick rock" - is essentially a vertical ammonite, resembling a petrified scabbard. Another common ammonite is loosely coiled and looks like a fossilized earthworm or snake, depending on the size. All ammonites raised and lowered themselves in the sea by filling the many chambers inside their shell with either air or water.
Some of Eichhorn's specimens are still coated with iridescent mother-of-pearl, but they are even more impressive when the mother-of-pearl is removed and the surfaces are polished. That brings out the beautiful, delicate patterns of the squiggly sutures that ran between the interior chambers. The patterns look something like coral, or like tiny leaves with frost-tinted edges.
Some of the ammonites are fingernail-size, but the Eichhorns have found some 2 and 3 feet in diameter. Ammonites lived and hunted in large schools, preferring algae-rich water more than 120 feet deep. The algae provided food for various marine animals, some of which were then eaten by the ammonites.
Larry Eichhorn said his father originally collected agates and Indian artifacts and then branched into fossils.
"I think it was to get us out and do something different as a family," he said, though back then "people thought you were nuts" if you were interested in fossils.
Eichhorn said he collected for years before he began studying up on ammonites, in the process assembling a nice little library of books, scientific papers and reference works. Beginning in the 1960s, he said, he began working with scientists and academics who made use of his collections. He has worked with researchers from Georgia Southern University, Kansas State, the University of Michigan, the University of Montana and the USGS, among other institutions.
Besides being important to scientists who study ammonites, the fossils are useful for a range of studies because they evolved relatively quickly into so many forms and are so widespread that they are a good "index fossil," used for dating the rock layer in which they are found and determining the age of other, rarer fossils.
An expert eye
Because he's made himself so knowledgeable and has worked with so many scientists, Rogers said, Eichhorn knows at a glance what is important and what is not, and he is careful to collect the kind of information scientists need about where the specimens were found and in what kind of material. Most important, he has a trained eye.
"He can find fossils like nobody," Rogers said.
Eichhorn's daughter, Connie, who lives in Livingston with her husband, Cecil Hoeme, is almost as proficient a fossil hunter as her father, though she doesn't pretend to have his scientific understanding. She and her husband have their own collection of ammonites, so large that when they built a new house, displaying their fossils was a prime consideration.
"We actually built the house around our collection," Connie said, creating a mini-museum in one room. Over the years they have often hosted groups of local students, and they have given some specimens to the Park County Museum, Park County High School and a Montessori school in Bozeman.
For all the Eichhorns' specialization in ammonites, it may seem odd that their most important finds have been extinct crabs. Three members of the family - Larry, Gary and Connie - have discovered new species of crab, Gary on the West Coast and Larry and Connie in Montana.
Gary had his find named after him and Connie will, too, after researchers are done studying it and publish papers on it. Larry has an autographed copy of the Journal of Paleontology article written about the two crab species he discovered, including the one named for him - Notopocorystes eichhorni.
Larry, in his habitually self-deprecating way, said it was nice to "have a name on something other than a tombstone."
Cecil Hoeme said he knew nothing about marine fossils until he met Connie, and learning under the tutelage of her father was like having his own private college professor.
"I never saw any of this until I was 40 years old," Hoeme said. "I was always out hunting and fishing, but I never had my eyes on the ground."
He finds it amazing to think that baculites might be the most common fossils in Montana, but few Montanans have ever seen one. Once you know where to look and how to look, he said, they're everywhere.
"It's incredible how many fossils are out there, and how many places there are to go," he said, pointing out that the motorcycle hill climb area south of Billings is classic Cretaceous marine formation, one teeming with fossils.
Cecil Hoeme said prospecting for fossils has opened his eyes not only to what's on the ground, but to what lies in Montana's distant past. Most people know nothing of the vast stretches of time that have shaped the landscape, he said.
"It's incredibly difficult to comprehend that," he said. "Most people can't comprehend that. But the story's in stone if you just want to read it."