MIDCO, OKLAHOMA - THE FIRST OKLAHOMA FOSSIL
INSECT LAGERSTATTEN
The image on the right is a scanned (1200 dpi) fossil fore wing of a Protorthopteran: Liomopteridae: Liomopterum ornatum Sellards 1909. ex Tasch collection (from discarded bulk material collected by Dr. Paul Tasch from his Noble VII site, Midco Insect Bed, Noble County, Oklahoma). Specimen RJB001b, identified by Roy J. Beckemeyer, March, 2000. Portion of fore wing. The shell-shaped object in the upper right is a conchostracan (clam shrimp).
The Midco, Oklahoma fossil beds were discovered by G.O. Raasch in Noble County, Oklahoma. In 1939 he sent about seventy fossil insect specimens he had collected in Noble County to Frank Carpenter. The following summer Carpenter and Raasch collected over 5,000 "well-preserved" insect fossils.
This locality is about 140 miles from the Elmo site in Kansas and is also part of the Wellington formation (the Wellington Sea covered parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado). The insect-bearing sediments at Midco were apparently laid down in a playa, Midco Salt Lake, which held only algae and Conchostraca (Crustacea). The insects were apparently carried into the lake by flooding of small streams. Plants did not grow near the lake. This site was thus quite different in nature from the Elmo location.
Another difference from Elmo is the widespread character of the Midco
deposits: insect-bearing Midco rocks are spread over an area of some 400 square
miles while Elmo is a small site.
[The photograph on the left was taken by Roy J. Beckemeyer at a Midco site near Perry, Oklahoma on 16 May, 2000. The arrows point to two of the insect layers of Raasch's Midco deposit. A number of plant and insect fossils as well as many conchostracans were found in rock slabs from this site.]
Carpenter returned to the Midco site in the years from 1948 to 1957.
The Harvard collection totaled about 8,000 specimens at the time of Carpenter's
last publication on the Midco insect fauna. (See Carpenter 1947 and 1979
in the bibliography for a description of
the collecting sites and fossils.) At the end of his first look at the
Oklahoma fossils in 1947, Carpenter had found it necessary to study "as
many as possible of the Palaeozoic insects already described from European and
North American deposits before continuing with the new material"
(Carpenter, 1979). As a result, his two papers covered only the
Palaeoptera and he did not include any Neoptera in either of the two
papers.
[The picture on the left is a
scanned image of a fragment of a large wing that appears to be that of
a protodonate, likely a Meganeuropsis. (M. permiana was described
from the Elmo Kansas site, and M. americana from the Midco
site.) Detailed study is pending, but the size and nature of the
venation is indicative of this preliminary diagnosis. The fragment was
collected at the site pictured above by Roy J. Beckemeyer in May, 2000.]
In the late 1950's and early 1960's, Dr. Paul Tasch of the University of Wichita (now Wichita State University) began a study of the palaeolimnology and particularly the conchostracan-bearing beds of the Kansas and Oklahoma Permian (Tasch, 1958, 1961, 1962, 1963, Tasch & Zimmerman, 1959, 1962). He came across many insect bearing strata and collected extensively in Raasch's Midco Beds as well as other newly discovered beds in Oklahoma (Noble and Kay counties) and Kansas (particularly Sumner County). He attempted to correlate the Elmo and Midco with the other insect bearing strata and to trace the layers through the two-state region.
The image on the right is a
scanned (1200 dpi) fossil Protorthopteran: Chelopteridae: Chelopterum
peregrinum Carpenter 1950. Originally described from the Elmo, Kansas
beds. Specimen is ex Tasch collection (see notes at the top of this
page). From Noble IIA, Bed 14, collected by Paul Tasch. Specimen No.
RJB002, portion of fore wing, identified March, 2000 by Roy J. Beckemeyer.
I am not aware of any further papers by either Zimmerman or Tasch on the insect fauna of these beds, but need to review both the specimens in the Tasch collection in the Geology Dept. at Wichita State University and the Tasch papers in the Special Collections Library at the University. Carpenter (1992) failed to include reference to any of the new taxa described by Zimmerman in Tasch & Zimmerman (1962), but I have included them on the checklist of Midco Permian Insects.
I recently met with Larry Skelton, manager of the Kansas Geological Survey Well Sample Library in Wichita to discuss the Kansas Permian deposits. He had "rescued" some of the Tasch collection bulk material from Kansas and Oklahoma when it had been readied for disposal when the Geology Department was moving. He transferred to me some 6 boxes of material, labeled as to site, which I am going over in search of additional insect material. Thus far, I have come across wings of two species, both Protorthoptera: Liomopterum ornatum Sellards 1909 (which had been listed by Tasch and Zimmerman) and Chelopterum peregrinum Carpenter 1950 (which had not been listed by them). I am continuing to work over the material and will report findings here.
In May of 2000 I visited Noble County and was able to collect a small amount of material from one of Raasch's localities. Fossils found from the slabs to date include the possible protodonate wing fragment pictured above, and a number of smaller wings which are also being studied. One of the smaller wings appears on first look to be that of an adult mayfly, family Protereismatidae. -- Roy J. Beckemeyer, 22 May, 2000.
Left
is a picture of the mayfly wing. It is a hind wing of an adult
Protereismatidae: Protereisma sp. It is not P. directum
Carpenter 1979, nor is it P. latum Sellards 1907, which Tasch and
Zimmerman reported from Midco. It appears somewhat similar to P.
permianum Sellards 1907, but may be an undescribed species. I hope to
compare it to the series of material discussed by Tillyard and Carpenter in
their reviews of the Elmo Ephemeroptera, and to the undescribed adult
Ephemeroptera wings from Midco that Carpenter mentioned in his 1979 paper. - Roy
Beckemeyer, April, 2003. NOTE: Since this appears to be a new species I
intend to publish a description soon, so please do not reproduce this figure.
Roy Beckemeyer, May 2003.
In
late 2002 and early 2003, Joseph Hall, a graduate student in geology at Wichita
State University studying the stratigraphy and sedimentology of the Wellington Formation in Kansas
and Oklahoma, and I visited a number of insect localities in Oklahoma and
Kansas. The Delopterum latum wing shown at left was collected by
Joseph on a trip he made to Raasch's Site 5 in Noble County in March, 2003.
- Roy Beckemeyer, April, 2003.
Left: A locality visited by Roy Beckemeyer and Joseph Hall in April and May, 2003: Tasch II-A (Raasch 3), in Noble County, Oklahoma. One fossil insect layer was worked and yielded a number of small wings and wing fragments. Pictures will be added here soon. Right: A close-up view of the location of the insect bed within a unit of alternating shales and dolomite.
New Martynovia species: The pictures below are counterpart (left, the impression of the wing) and part (right, the dorsal surface of the wing) of an exciting specimen from Raasch 9 collected by Roy Beckemeyer and Joseph Hall on 1 May, 2003. The counterpart constitutes nearly the entire wing, the part preserves about 2/3 of the wing in two fragments (the distal portion a nearly paper-thin piece that fractured off the substrate during exposure of the fossil). The fossil is a well-preserved specimen of the order Diaphanopterodea, family Martynoviidae. Once known only from the Wellington of Kansas and Oklahoma, Bethoux, Nel, Lapeyrie, Gand, and Galtier (2003) recently described several taxa from this family that were found in the Salagou Formation in France. The specimen below has the wing basal venation very well preserved, and is of some significance. It is probably a new species (apparently of genus Martynovia, and similar to M. protohymenoides Tillyard, 1932, from Elmo) and I will be publishing a description soon. (There are 2 species of Martynovia known from Elmo, and one from Midco - this may be the second Midco species.) Please do not reproduce these figures. UPDATE: June, 2004. New species description now published. See "A new species of Martynovia Tillyard, 1932 (Insecta: Daphanopterodea: Martynoviidae) from the Lower Permian Welllington Formation of Noble County, Oklahoma", by Roy J. Beckemeyer, Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society 77(2):127-131 (28 April 2004), which names this fossil insect "Martynovia halli Beckemeyer, 2004" - named for Joseph Hall.
Left:
A specimen of Protorthoptera: Chelopteridae: Chelopterum peregrinum
collected by Joseph Hall from Raasch Locality 4, Noble County, Oklahoma in
August, 2003.
Left:
A plant fossil from Raasch 9 locality collected by Roy Beckemeyer, 16 May,
2000.
The Paleontologists who worked the Midco site:
Midco Fossil Insect Checklist
Return to top of page - Return to "windsofkansas" Home Page - Return to Fossil Insects Page
The Grassland Biome - Biomechanics - Great Plains Biodiversity - Insects - Fossil Insects - World Biodiversity - Personal Info