Albert Kollar

October 1, 2021 by wpengine

Meet the Fossil Detectives in the Basement

by Suzanne Mills and Albert Kollar

Gray metal storage cabinets march in rows across the concrete floor. The collection space has no windows and there is a constant hissing sound from the overhead air ducts. No matter, the staff is looking for clues of the geologic and paleontological past, or History of the Earth, through the vast collection of fossil invertebrates. The staff and volunteers of the Section of Invertebrate Paleontology (IP) are tasked to reorganize, preserve, and curate fossils through the leadership of the Collection Manager Albert Kollar.

Person in a hallway lined with gray cabinets — Collection Assistant Kevin Love at the doors of the Invertebrate Paleontology section.

On any given workday, you’ll find us hefting drawers full of fossil-bearing rocks and playing specimen-box Tetris to make fossils fit in the available cabinet space. We examine century-old inventory books, search out (usually Google) maps to find absconded valuables (historical fossil sites), and decipher written scripts in unfamiliar French and German for valuable geologic data.

Long-term volunteers in IP include Rich Fedosick, a researcher assisting in the project to document the Carnegie building stones; John Harper, an expert on fossil snails taxonomy, Roman Kyshakevych, who is deciphering the famous Coppi collection from Italy; Tamra Schiappa, a paleontologist at Slippery Rock University who is updating fossil cephalopod identifications; and Vicky Sowinski, who performs collection support. Student researchers include collection assistant and graphic artist Kay Hughes, a 2021 Mount Holyoke College graduate who coauthored four peer-reviewed scientific publications produced by IP; and collection assistant Will Vincentt, who researched two Bayet collections, the Hunsruck Slate of Germany and Lyme Regis of England. Tara Pallas-Sheetz, a part-time assistant, has worked on various projects over the years.

Hear from some of our newest staff and summer volunteers in their own words below.

Woman with a drawer of coral fossils — Lizzie Begley with large fossil corals

Name: Lizzie Begley

About me: B.A. Anthropology Penn State 2021; masters candidate in Museum Studies and Non-profit Management certification in progress at Johns Hopkins University

Why IP: Working “behind the scenes” in IP has helped me develop a better sense of what it looks like to work in a museum such as the Carnegie. As an aspiring museum professional, experience behind gallery floors is invaluable as I work to find my place in the field. For this experience I couldn’t be more grateful and, honestly, couldn’t be having more fun!

woman with a drawer of fossil ammonites — Katie Golden with fossil ammonites

Name: Katie Golden

About me: B.S. Biology, Juniata College 2023 (expected)

Why IP: When I was in preschool, I told people I wanted to be a paleontologist when I grew up. Here in IP, I like exploring a part of the museum that most people don’t get to see. I particularly enjoy puzzle-piecing together fossils that need repair. The intricate ammonites, trilobites, and insects preserved in amber are especially beautiful. My favorite fossil organism is Anomalocaris.

Woman at a table with fossil corals — Tori Gouza with fossil corals

Name: Tori Gouza

About me: B.A. History and Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh 2023 (expected)

Why IP: I love working in IP. It is so exciting to be able to interact with others in the section and to learn what projects they are currently working on. Albert Kollar has encouraged not only discussion but also collaboration. It is great to converse with others who are passionate about their work.

Man sitting at a computer in an office — Kevin Love enters data about a fossil eurypterid

Name: Kevin Love

About me: IP Collection Assistant; B.S. Geology and Ecology & Evolution summa cum laude, University of Pittsburgh 2021

Why IP: I like solving puzzles at work. I find invertebrate fossils aesthetically appealing, but the main reason I like this job is that I get to understand little enigmas from Earth’s past. I like solving historical questions and compiling more information about fossils in the collection.

woman with a fossil trilobite — Suzanne Mills with fossil trilobite Isotelus gigas

Name: Suzanne Mills

About me: IP Collection Assistant, Professional Geologist, mom

Why IP: Every day is different when you work with a collection of 800,000 specimens. I may come across a 100-million-year-old ammonite sparkling with crystals inside, or a drawer full of trilobites acquired by the museum in 1903, when Andrew Carnegie was alive. I love that my work requires me to learn more about fossils which are beautiful, historical, and scientifically significant.

person with a drawer of fossil crinoids — Ellis Peet with fossil crinoids

Name: Ellis Peet

About me: B.S. Environmental Geoscience with Geology concentration, Slippery Rock University 2021

Why IP: The management and staff of IP are smart, kind, personable, and they take paleontology seriously. I also like the environment at IP because it smells like a library and limestone dust, which reminds me of the geology department at Slippery Rock.

Name: Joann Wilson

About me: Interpreter for the Department of Education, Carnegie Museum of Natural History

Why IP: Fossils inspire awe. I enjoy unravelling the stories behind the individuals that discovered, studied and collected these breathtaking specimens.

Suzanne Mills is a Collection Assistant and Albert Kollar is Collections Manager in the Section of Invertebrate Paleontology at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

Bayet and Krantz: 16 Words (Part 1)

by Joann Wilson and Albert Kollar

In June of 1903, William Holland, Director of the Carnegie Museum, seized a rare chance to acquire one of the finest private collections in all of Europe. The purchase was made with sixteen words. Within in Holland’s Archives at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History Library, on onion paper so fragile that it appears to float, is a carbon copy of the telegram that influenced the early history of the Paleontology Department. Mysteriously, only one name appears on this fateful cable, and it is not a name that you would expect. The name is “Krantz,” Dr. Friedrich Krantz of Bonn, Germany.

Black and white photo of a man in a suit holding a book surrounded by books and plants. — Dr. Friedrich Krantz sitting in the conservatory, or wintergarten, at his villa in Germany, (date unknown). Permission of Ursula Müller-Krantz, Executive Director, Dr. F. Krantz.

In 1859, Friedrich Krantz was born into a family that operated a geological supply business. In 1888, Krantz graduated with a PhD in geology from the University of Erlangen. That same year, he joined “Dr. A Krantz,” the company founded by his uncle, Adam August Krantz. By 1891, Friedrich Krantz took charge and changed the company name to “Dr. F. Krantz, Rheinisches Mineraliaen Contor.” The company continues operations to this day out of headquarters in Bonn.

Exactly when Ernest Bayet of Brussels and Friedrich Krantz met is uncertain. But thanks to the letters and fossil lists that arrived with the Bayet collection, we know that they corresponded at least three times. The difficult task of translating these documents into English is being handled by volunteer Lucien Schoenmakers, a resident of the Netherlands. Schoenmakers’ translation work here and with other records is contributing critical information to the Section of Invertebrate Paleontology’s multiyear project to fully document the invertebrate portion of the Bayet Collection.

From the archive, we know that Krantz visited Bayet at least once. On July 7th, 1897, Krantz wrote, “I intend to come to Brussels towards the end of next week and will be honored to visit you, I can use the numbered list to give you the exact individual prices for all the objects displayed by me.”

In fact, Bayet may have selected Krantz to act as his agent for the sale because he was so familiar with it. Krantz sold many museum quality specimens to Bayet; many with distinctive, elegant labels.

Fossil specimen with partial label underneath — *Encrinus liliiformis* Miller (CM 29840): a Triassic crinoid from Brunswick, Germany with Krantz label.

The sale of Baron Ernest Bayet’s fossil collection to the Carnegie Museum in 1903, made front page news in the New York Times, and other papers across the country. In a letter to Andrew Carnegie, thanking him for allocating $25,000 for the purchase, an enormous sum for that time, Holland wrote, “We are never likely to have another such chance, and you have done a most splendid thing in securing it [the Bayet Collection] for our Museum of Paleontology.” That most splendid thing transpired, over a century ago, with just sixteen words:

“Carnegie Museum buys collection. Will pay cash price fixed by Krantz. If satisfactory, telegraph answer yes.”

Photograph of a telegraph that reads: Baron de Bayet, Bruxelles, Belgium, Carnegie Museum buys collection. Will pay cash price fixed by Krantz. If satisfactory, telegraph answer yes. — Cable sent from Pittsburgh to Brussels on June 9th or 10th, 1903 offering to buy Baron Ernest Bayet’s fossil collection. “Krantz” refers to Friedrich Krantz of Bonn, Germany, a business man and fossil dealer who acted as Bayet’s negotiating agent.

Part 2 of this series highlights spectacular Krantz specimens within the Bayet collection.

Many thanks for the generous contributions of Ursula Müller-Krantz, Executive Director of Dr. F Krantz Rheinisches Mineraliaen Contor GmbH & Co., Marie Corrado, Carnegie Museum of Natural History Library Manager and Kelsea Collins, Carnegie Museum Library Cataloger. Continued gratitude to volunteer Lucien Schoenmakers’ ongoing effort to translate archival Bayet documents. Joann Wilson is an Interpreter in the Education Department at Carnegie Museum of Natural History and Albert Kollar is Collections Manager for the Section of Invertebrate Paleontology. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

Student of the World; Part 2: Stearns and Bayet

by Joann Wilson and Albert Kollar

“His [Frederick Stearns] love for that which was beautiful and useful, led him to collect a vast amount of material covering so many fields of human effort…”

Detroit Free Press, January 15, 1907

Fossils pass through many hands. Some hands hold discoveries, some buy and sell, others study and organize. Behind every fossil is a story and hopefully, for those in museum collections, a specimen label. With luck, the geology and paleontology of the label script is accurate. Beginning with the creation of the first color geological map by William Smith in 1815 and the subsequent organizing of the Geologic Time Scale in 1823, paleontologists worked to validate stratigraphy by collecting and describing new species from exposed strata in Europe and North America. It was not until the publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species in 1859 that paleontological work shifted to include studying evolution as documented by fossil evidence.

Today we understand that many hands aided fossil discovery, often in anonymity. Thanks to technology and through a focus shift to the individuals behind the specimens, we can now provide a fuller picture of the past that acknowledges the roles of collectors, dealers, indigenous cultures, women, quarry workers, and all who aided in the pursuit of fossils.

In the basement of Carnegie Museum of Natural History, behind a set of gray steel doors in the Section of Invertebrate Paleontology, is an astonishing assembly of archival documents from the Bayet Collection. Andrew Carnegie made front page news in 1903 by purchasing an estimated 130,000 fossils from Ernest Bayet of Brussels. Along with the fossils, the museum also received hundreds of documents written primarily in French, German, and Italian. Most of it has remained untranslated, until now.

Thanks to volunteer Lucien Schoenmakers of the Netherlands, details of fossil trades and purchases from over 100 years ago provide links to narratives that have yet to be told. Join us as we start the journey. Our series, which began with an examination of correspondence between fossil collector Frederick Stearns and his client, Bayet, continues here with a deeper profile of Stearns.

Frederick Stearns, date unknown. Permission of the University of Michigan Stearns Collection.

Frederick Stearns of Detroit was a man not born into wealth, but with a passion for education, art, and science. His early life revolved around diligence, not fossils. Born in Lockport, New York in 1831, Stearns quit school at age 14 to find a job. Within a year, he found work as an apprentice to a pharmacist in Buffalo, New York. Of his early life, he later said, “one of my earliest memories is looking into the windows Dr. Merchant’s Gargling Oil Drug store and wondering at the mystery of the white squares of magnesia and the round balls of chalk.” Eventually, Stearns moved to another pharmacy, and became partner, but he was not convinced that Buffalo, New York was his ticket to success.

On a frosty New Year’s Day in 1855, Stearns, newly married and just 24 years of age, crossed the frozen Detroit River by foot to start anew. Of that period, he later said, “little money, fair credit, high hope.” He opened a retail pharmacy in Detroit. To reach customers, he made short trips to the surrounding area, leaving samples of his products. Over time, his business expanded to the manufacture of pharmaceuticals. In 1877, he made history by installing the first telegraph line in the city of Detroit. But despite the success, Stearns dreamed of the education lost to him when he left school at the age of 14. In 1887 at age 56, he turned the business over to his sons and he began to travel the world. Over the next twenty years, he collected many items, including fossils.

William Smith’s 1815 Color Geological Map.

Stearns pursuits led him to Africa, Europe, and Asia. In the late 1800’s, a voyage to Japan required weeks of travel as compared to a current 14-hour flight from New York to Tokyo. In the early 1890’s, Stearns travelled to Japan twice for the purpose of studying mollusks and other marine life. In a book published in 1895 titled, “Catalog of the Marine Mollusks of Japan,” Stearns credits Japanese fisherman Morita Seto for assisting in the collection of over “1000 forms of marine life.”

But Stearns interest did not stop with mollusks. He also collected fossils, art, and musical instruments. His collection of musical instruments at the Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor Michigan, is considered one of the finest in the world.

For a short time, Stearns also collected fossils. Between 1888-1889, he wrote two letters to Ernest Bayet about a trade deal. Stearns first letter offers a clue as to how they met. Both men appear to have known fossil dealer Lucien Stilwell of Deadwood, South Dakota. The trade between Stearns and Bayet did not go smoothly, but it does have a happy ending.

Stearns was a student of the world until the very end. In 1907, just days before he was scheduled to sail for Egypt, he became ill and died. At his passing, the Detroit Free Press wrote, “A remarkable phase of Mr. Stearns’s activities as a collector was their diversity… and all of this for the simple love of learning things that he might tell them to others without price.”

Many thanks to the generous contributions of Carol Stepanchuk, Outreach and Academic Projects at the U-M Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments Lieberthal-Rogers Center for Chinese Studies and Joseph Gascho, Associate Professor at the University of Michigan School of Music and Director of the Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments. Many thanks to volunteer Lucien Schoenmakers’ ongoing effort to translate archival Bayet documents written in French and German.

Joann Wilson is an Interpreter in the Education Department at Carnegie Museum of Natural History and Albert Kollar is Collections Manager for the Section of Invertebrate Paleontology. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

Understanding Fossil Fuels through Carnegie Museums’ Exhibits

by Albert D. Kollar, Collection Manager, with assistance from Suzanne Mills, Collection Assistant, and Joann Wilson, Volunteer Section of Invertebrate Paleontology

The exhibits of Carnegie Museum of Natural History and Carnegie Museum of Art are ideal for a multidisciplinary study of fossil fuels in Pennsylvania and beyond. Such a study must properly begin with some historical background about the landmark Oakland building that houses both museums, as well as some background information about fossil fuels.

When the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh opened in 1895, the architects, Longfellow, Alden, and Harlow incorporated roof skylights for maximum daytime lighting in the Italian Renaissance designed building¹. Nighttime activities were illuminated by interior gas lighting fixtures, possibly supplied by the Murrysville gas field, which began production in 1878. With the opening of the Carnegie Institute Extension in 1907, the Bellefield Boiler Plant was built in Junction Hollow to supply in-house steam heat and electricity from bituminous coal¹. From the 1970’s, coal and natural gas had been used to heat the boilers that supply heat to the Oakland Campus, Phipps, the University of Pittsburgh and the Oakland hospitals. In 2009 coal was eliminated as a fuel source. Electricity on the other hand, is supplied through Talen Energy from multiple sources (coal, gas, and renewal energy sources). For the future, Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh plans to receive its electricity from renewable solar energy via Talen Energy².

What are Fossil Fuels?

Coal, oil, and natural gas (methane), known collectively as fossil fuels, are sources of energy derived from the remains of ancient life forms that usually are found preserved in coal rock, black shale, and sandstone.

Exhibit called "What's a Fossil Fuel?" Fossil fuels on display are labeled clockwise from the top as follows: peat, bituminous coal, anthracite coal, sub-bituminous coal, oil glass tubes, lignite. — Figure 1.

Coal is a rock. The coalification process starts from a thick accumulation of plant material in reducing environments where the organic matter does not decay completely. This deposit of plant residue that thrives in freshwater swamps at high latitudes forms peat, an early stage or rank in the development of coal. With the burial of peat over geologic time and a low temperature form of metamorphism produces a progression of the maturity or “rank” of the organic deposits that form the coal ranks of lignite, sub-bituminous, bituminous, and anthracite)³ (Fig. 1). The Pennsylvanian Period was named for the rocks and coals of southwestern Pennsylvania that formed more than 300 million years ago.

Oil and natural gas, collectively known as hydrocarbons, were forming in the Devonian rocks of Pennsylvania between 360 and 390 million years ago. These hydrocarbon deposits or kerogens are made of millions of generations of marine plankton and animal remains that accumulated in a restricted anoxia ocean basin that extended from southern New York, through western Pennsylvania, northern West Virginia to eastern Kentucky⁴. The thick layers of sediment formed black shales or mud rocks such as the Marcellus Shale. Black shales are rich in oil and gas and are called source rocks. Sandstones such as the Oriskany Sandstone that is older than the Marcellus Shale is a reservoir rock. An amorphous mass of organic matter or kerogen undergo complex geochemical reshuffling of the hydrocarbon molecules first with burial then by thermal “cracking” as heat and pressure through the geologic process of metamorphism over millions of years transform kerogen into modern day fossil fuels⁴.

Fossil Fuels in Modern Society

As commodities converted to fuels for our modern world, these resources account for 80% of today’s energy consumption in the United States⁵. All three fossil fuels, in furnaces of vastly different design, have been used to directly heat homes, schools, workplaces, and other structures. In power plants, all three have been used for generating electricity for lighting, charging mobile phones, and powering computers, home appliances, and all manner of industrial machines. In the United States, , coal became the country’s primary energy source in the late 1880s, displacing the forest-destroying practice of burning wood. It ceded the top spot to petroleum in 1950 but enjoyed a late-20th-century renaissance as the primary fuel for power plants⁵. Coal now generates approximately 11% of our country’s supply down from 48% just 20 years ago. Natural gas is currently used to generate approximately 35% of US electricity supplanting the use of coal⁶. While petroleum is less than1%⁶.

Transportation accounts for approximately 37% of total energy consumption. Coal played a historic role in powering railroads, and both compressed natural gas and batteries (charged with electricity generated from various sources) are of growing importance, however, refined oil products currently power 91% of the transportation sector⁶.

Newspaper clipping from The Rodnen & Otamatea Times dated Wednesday, August 14, 1912. The story shown is as follows: Science Notes and News. Coal Consumption Affecting Climate. The furnaces of the world are now burning about 2,000,000,000 tons of coal a year. When this is burned, uniting with oxygen, it adds about 7,000,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere yearly. This tends to make the air a more effective blanket for the earth and to raise its temperature. The effect may be considerable in a few centuries. — Figure 2.

In the early 20^th century, scientists warned about how the burning of coal could create global warming in future centuries by raising the level of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse or heat-holding, gas, in the atmosphere. (Fig. 2 ). It took less than a century for evidence to mount of climate change associated with the burning of fossil fuels, the clearing of forests associated with industrial scale livestock production, and from waste management and other routine processes of modern life. In recent decades headlines have routinely proclaimed the risks of a warming planet, including damage to terrestrial ecosystems, the oceans, and a rise in sea level⁷.

Fossil Fuels and Museum Geology Displays

When architects Frank E. Alden and Alfred B. Harlow designed the Carnegie Institute Extension (1907), they incorporated Andrew Carnegie’s vision to create an introduction hall to the museum named Physics, Geology and Mineralogy⁸. This hall (the forerunner to Benedum Hall of Geology) was intended to introduce Pittsburghers to the regional natural history subjects of geology, paleontology, and economic geology (fossil fuels)⁹.

Exhibit in Benedum Hall of Geology with fake trees in the foreground and a swamp diorama in the background. — Figure 3.

In the 1940s, the 300-million-year-old Pennsylvanian age coal forest diorama was installed in a corner space of what is now part of the Benedum Hall of Geology (Fig. 3). Because coal converted to coke is a vital ingredient in steel production, this three-dimensional depiction of the conditions under which Pittsburgh’s economically important coal deposits formed was (and remains) an important public asset.

Exhibit labeled Pennsylvanian Marine Life. Below the sign is a diorama designed to look like an aquarium. — Figure 4.

In 1965, as part of an overall plan to bring more of the natural history museum’s fossil collection to the public, Paleozoic Hall opened with funding from the Richard King Mellon Foundation¹⁰. This exhibition featured nine dioramas that recreate the ancient environments through 290 million years of Earth history. Sadly, only one of the nine units remains on display, the diorama depicting the Pennsylvanian age marine seaway (Fig. 4 ), in the Benedum Hall of Geology.

Since the Benedum Hall of Geology opened to the public in 1988 the exhibition has featured an economic geology component with displays explaining differences between coal ranks Lignite coal to anthracite coal, and a variety of Pennsylvania’s crude oils and lubricants processed from the historic well Edwin Drake drilled in Titusville in 1859 (Fig. 1 )¹¹.

Benedum Hall of Geology strata wall. Shows different colors of rock stratigraphy from left to right: tan, blue-grey, maroon, beige, dark gray, olive green. — Figure 5.

Today, the Hall’s “strata wall,” a towering depiction of some of the rock layers found thousands of feet below western Pennsylvania, is in my opinion, an under-utilized display in terms of conveying information about fossil fuels. Although the wall is not currently documented with any geologic information, minor changes might allow visitors to use the lens of rock strata to better understand historical events such as the Drake Well, and economically important geologic reservoirs such as the Marcellus Shale (the second largest gas deposit in the United States), the natural gas storage reservoir of the Oriskany Sandstone, and the gas and liquid condensate (ethane) extracted from the Utica Formation (Ordovician Age) for making plastic products at the Shell Cracker Plant in Beaver County, PA (Fig. 5 ).

Exhibit case labeled Holzmaden. A blue arrow points to a crinoid fossil. — Figure 6.

Elsewhere in the museum, visitors can learn more about the topic of fossil fuels at several other locations. At the Holzmaden fossil exhibit in Dinosaurs in Their Time, there is a large fossil crinoid preserved in a dark gray limestone of Jurassic age, that represents a reservoir of crude oil in Germany (Fig. 6). At the mini diorama of the La Brea tar pits, oil seeps from natural fractures from an approximately six-million-year-old rock of Miocene age, to the unconsolidated surface sediment in what is now part of the City of Los Angeles (Fig. 7).

La Brea tar pits diorama. A vulture sits on a tree above the tar pits. — Figure 7.

Looking for Fossil Fuel Evidence in Art

In 2018, I reviewed 58 landscape paintings and the John White Alexander wall murals on the first and second floors of the Grand Staircase within Carnegie Museum of Art (CMOA) galleries to look for artistic documentation of what I interpreted to be causes for climate change based on the science. I found many examples based on the use of coal as a fossil fuel for power and coking in steel mills and the natural formation of bio-methane as portrayed in ecosystem landscapes of the industrial age of the middle 19^th and early 20^th century¹².

Collage of coal landscapes. Clockwise from top right: Waterloo Bridge, London, Claude Monet c. 1903; The Great Bridge, Rouen (Le Grand Pont, Rouen), Camille Pissarro, c. 1896; Pittsburgh Fifty Years Ago from the Salt Works on Saw Mill Run, Russell Smith, c. 1884; The Crowning of Labor Murals, John White Alexander, c. 1905 - 1908; The Coal Carrier, David Gilmore Blyth, c. 1854 - 1858 — Figure 8.

Collage of five illustrations of steel mills — Figure 9.

Searching for the CMOA landscapes paintings takes a little patience, but the visitor is rewarded by taking a new look at some of the art museum’s classic paintings (Fig. 8 and 9).

Three historic landmark signs. On left: First Mining of Pittsburgh Coal. This State's bituminous coal industry was born about 1760 on Coal Hill, now Mt. Washington. Here the Pittsburgh coal bed was mined to supply Fort Pitt. This was eventually to be judged the most valuable individual mineral deposit in the U.S. Sign on the top right: Drake Well Park. On this site Col. Edwin Drake struck oil Aug. 27, 1859; the birth of the petroleum industry. Sign on the bottom right: Murrysville Gas Well: First gas well in county and one of the world's most productive. Drilled, 1878. Caught fire in 1881, burning for years with tremendous roar and brilliance. Later was controlled and piped to Pittsburgh. Site lies 500 yards S.E. near railroad. — Figure 10.

Within day trip visiting distance of Carnegie Museums are historic plaques highlighting the discovery of coal on Mount Washington, natural gas in Murrysville, and oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania. (Fig. 10). At all three stops you’ll have a better understanding of the significance if you begin your investigation of fossil fuels at Carnegie Museums.

Albert D. Kollar is the Collection Manager for the Section of Invertebrate Paleontology. Suzanne Mills is the Collection Assistant and Joann Wilson is a volunteer Section of Invertebrate Paleontology. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

References

Kollar, A.D. 2020. CMP Travel Program and Section of Invertebrate Paleontology promotes the 125^th Anniversary of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh with an outdoor walking tour. https://carnegiemnh.org/125th-anniversary-carnegie-library-of-pittsburgh-outdoor-walking-tour/
Personal communications Anthony J. Young, Vice President (FP&O) Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.
Brezinski, D. K. and C K. Brezinski. 2014. Geology of Pennsylvania’s Coal. PAlS Publication Number 18.
Geology of the Marcellus Shale. 2011. Brezinski, D.K., D. A. Billman, J.A. Harper, and A.D. Kollar. PAlS Publication 11.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-03/coal-consumption-in-the-u-s-declines-as-natural-gas-solar-wind-energy-rise
United States Energy Agency (EIA) 2019.
Bill Gates. 2021. How to Avoid A Climate Disaster.
Kollar et al. 2020. Carnegie Institute Extension Connemara Marble: Cross-Atlantic Connections Between Western Ireland and Gilded Age Architecture in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. ACM, 86, 207-253.
Dawson, M. R. 1988^.Benedum Hall of Geology. Carnegie Magazine, 12-18.
Eller, E. R. 1965. Paleozoic Hall. Carnegie Magazine, 255-338.
Harper and Dawson 1992. Benedum Hall-A Celebration of Geology. Pennsylvania Geology, 23, 12-15.
Kollar et al. 2018. Geology of the Landscape Paintings at the Carnegie Museum of Art, a Reflection of the “Anthropocene” 1860-2017. Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs, v. 49, 243.

University of Michigan Helps Solve Century Old Fossil Mystery – Part 1: Stearns and Bayet. The Dispute

by Joann Wilson and Albert Kollar

“I am reluctantly, arriving at the opinion, that I am the victim of an imposition for which I hold you responsible.” –Frederick Stearns in a letter to Ernest Bayet, March 27, 1889

Frederick Stearns, date unknown. Permission of the University of Michigan Stearns Collection.

In 1903, Andrew Carnegie purchased the world-famous Bayet fossil collection for the Carnegie Museum. Since that time some invertebrates in the massive 130,000 specimen collection have been thoroughly studied, but the documents that arrived with the fossil shipment remained largely unexamined. Reasons for this neglect are understandable. The collection’s accompanying letters, lists, journals, and other documents were written primarily in French, German, and Italian, and in what has been described as “an impenetrable hand.”

Translation of the documents into English was a critical step in making them better known to researchers and the public. As part of Albert Kollar’s multiyear project to restudy the invertebrate portion of the Bayet Collection, that difficult task is ongoing thanks to volunteer Lucien Schoenmakers, a resident of the Netherlands.

The translated documents bring some life to the people behind the famous fossils, and our series begins with one of them, Frederick Stearns.

Which gets us back to the letter excerpted above. One wonders what Ernest Bayet thought in the spring of 1889 when he opened it. Bayet, who would become secretary to the cabinet of Leopold II, and Frederick Stearns of Detroit, Michigan, a retired pharmaceutical executive, business owner, and renowned fossil collector, had settled on a sizable trade deal. Stearns was to send over “1000 species of fossils” from the United States. In return, Bayet was to ship “5500 species of shells.”

One of the Frederick Stearns fossils in the Bayet Collection at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History: Horn Coral, Cyathophyllum, CM# 51102. On the bottom is an original Frederick Stearns label that survived crossing the Atlantic Ocean twice.

Stearns had shipped his lot of fossils, but by spring of 1889, he had yet to receive a shipment from Bayet. Fuming, he wrote, “to obtain legal redress through the advice of the American Minister at Brussels. Failing in this I stand ready to spend 2500 francs or even 5000 francs if necessary, to advertise you, and your way of doing things to the Scientific World. In doing which I shall at least have the satisfaction of check mating any similar future operations of the sort with other persons as credulous of your honor and integrity.” In current figures, Stearns was willing to spend $15,000-$30,000.

Stearns ended, “with this for warning, I subscribe myself indignantly etc.” After this letter, no more correspondence is known to exist between the two men. Did Bayet send his lot? As part of Albert’s project to investigate the individuals behind the Bayet Collection, we wondered, was it possible to solve this mystery over a century later?

Research into Stearns revealed that he collected more than fossils and shells. Carol Stepanchuk, Collection Outreach Program Coordinator for the Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments at the University of Michigan, provided a valuable starting point. With her guidance, and a hunch that Stearns may have left his other collections to the University of Michigan, we reached out across the Ann Arbor campus to Jennifer Bauer, Research Museum Collection Manager at the University’s Museum of Paleontology. Jennifer added Taehwan Lee, the museum’s Mollusk Collection Manager, to the search. After many months, our story has a happy ending. Jennifer and Taehwan located over 5000 specimens in the U-M collections, donated by Frederick Stearns, with “Bayet” as collector. Thanks to museum collections records and the amazing team at U-M, we now know that Ernest Bayet did send his shells!

In Part 2 of our series, we will take a look at the unusual path that brought Frederick Stearns into contact with Ernest Bayet and fossil collecting. As John Carter, former Curator of the Section of Invertebrate Paleontology at Carnegie Museum of Natural history, once wrote about the Bayet Collection, “The best measure of the worth of this treasure trove, however, is not its size but its uniqueness. Many of the individual collections, all made in the nineteenth century, are essentially irreplaceable, because similar specimens from the same collecting localities are no longer available.”

Many thanks to the generous contributions of Carol Stepanchuk, Collection Outreach Coordinator for the U-M Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments, Joseph Gascho, Associate Professor at the U-M School of Music and Director of the Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments, Jennifer Bauer, Research Collection Manager at the U-M Museum of Paleontology, Taehwan Lee, Mollusk Collection Manager at the U-M Zoology Museum and volunteer Lucien Schoenmakers for meticulous language translation.

Joann Wilson is an Interpreter for the Education Department at Carnegie Museum of Natural History and Albert Kollar is Collections Manager for the Section of Invertebrate Paleontology. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

Mary Anning: For the Love of the Blue Lias

Figure 1: Albert Kollar holding a fossil, Lyme Regis, 1999.

Two hundred million years before the birth of Mary Anning, a village in southeast England known as Lyme Regis, (Figure 1) was a shallow, watery world filled with pointy toothed reptiles, fish, and an abundance of ammonites. By 1799, the year of Mary’s birth, these ancient seas that deposited lime, silt and mud, had long receded, but evidence of the watery past remained in the Lyme Regis limestone and mudstone cliffs. Today, this region is part of a geologic formation of early Jurassic age known as the Blue Lias.

Figure 2: Drawing of Mary Anning’s house in Lyme Regis, Dorset, England. June 1842. Text on the drawing reads: The House in which the famous Mary Anning lived when she first sold fossils. Sketched June 1842 by W. H. Prideaux and Edward Liddon. The round table for the fossils used to stand in front of the open cellar window which was a work shop. Cockmoil Square

Mary’s father, Richard Anning, hunted fossils along the Lyme Regis coast to supplement his meager carpentry income. Mary and her brother, Joseph, accompanied their father along the landslide prone cliff in search of fossils to collect and sell to wealthy patrons and the scientific community. When she was 11, Mary’s father died of tuberculosis. His death left Mary, her mother and brother destitute. Despite the loss, they continued the family fossil business. At the age of 12, just one year after her father’s death, Mary excavated and identified the first ichthyosaur. Although Mary had no formal education and received no formal recognition for her monumental find, word of her abilities spread in the male dominated paleontological community. By the 1820’s, she managed the family fossil shop (Figure 2), a business where survival depended on finding major new specimens. At the age of 24, Mary uncovered the first plesiosaur skeleton and just five years later, the first pterosaur discovered in England.

Figure 3: Carnegie Museum of Natural History Lyme Regis display, *Dinosaurs in Their Time* exhibition. Includes real fish, ammonites and an ichthyosaur.

Visitors to Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s Dinosaurs in Their Time exhibition can scrutinize fish scale sized details in fossils from the Lyme Regis cliffs, an extraordinary level of preservation that Albert Kollar witnessed in the field when he collected fossils from the locality in 1999. (Figure 3).

A new movie, titled “Ammonite,” staring Kate Winslet as Mary Anning, promises to captivate a new generation with this often-overlooked chapter in the history of paleontology.

Despite hardship, lack of recognition, and danger, Mary continued working until her death from breast cancer in 1847. Her contributions to science were not formally recognized for over a century. In 2010, the Royal Society of London named her “one of the ten most influential women scientists in British History”

In a recent CMNH blog post, William Vincett, University of Delaware graduate student and Collecting Assistant for the Section of Invertebrate Paleontology, wrote, “It’s easy to see how she developed a love of fossils after discovering such a magnificent creature as a child.” Yes. Mary wondered, suffered, and persevered for the love of the Blue Lias.

Joann Wilson is an Interpreter for the Department of Education and volunteer with the Section of Invertebrate Paleontology and Albert Kollar is Collections Manager for the Section of Invertebrate Paleontology. Thanks to author Barry Alfonso for thoughtful insight. Museum staff, volunteers, and interns are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

Meet the Fossil Detectives in the Basement

by Suzanne Mills and Albert Kollar

Related Content

Carnegie Museum of Natural History Blog Citation Information

Share this post!

Bayet and Krantz: 16 Words (Part 1)

by Joann Wilson and Albert Kollar

Related Content

Carnegie Museum of Natural History Blog Citation Information

Share this post!

Share this post!

Student of the World; Part 2: Stearns and Bayet

Related Content

Carnegie Museum of Natural History Blog Citation Information

Share this post!

Share this post!

Understanding Fossil Fuels through Carnegie Museums’ Exhibits

What are Fossil Fuels?

Fossil Fuels in Modern Society

Fossil Fuels and Museum Geology Displays

Looking for Fossil Fuel Evidence in Art

Related Content

Carnegie Museum of Natural History Blog Citation Information

Share this post!

University of Michigan Helps Solve Century Old Fossil Mystery – Part 1: Stearns and Bayet. The Dispute

Related Content

Carnegie Museum of Natural History Blog Citation Information

Share this post!

Share this post!

Mary Anning: For the Love of the Blue Lias

Related Content

About

Get Involved

Bring a Group

Powdermill

More Information