The map below shows the location of these sites as well as the location of the Elmo and Hamilton fossil insect sites superimposed on the Kansas Geological Survey's Generalized Geologic Map of Kansas:
Belvidere (Kiowa County) (Cretaceous):
I have not yet been able to determine the location of any fossil insect specimens from this site. It is possible that they might be in the Geology collection at The University of Kansas. The only reference to Cretaceous insects in Kansas that I have found is a brief article from Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science, XVI (1897-1898):284, "On the finding of fossil insects in the Comanche Cretaceous of Kansas", by C. N. Gould. I have reproduced the article in its entirety here by scanning the original item.
This site is famous for its Permian-like floral assemblage
in what is definitely a Pennsylvanian formation, the Stanton limestone.
The site and its geology are well-described in "A 'Permian' flora from the
Pennsylvanian rocks of Kansas" by R. C. Moore, M. K. Elias & N. D.
Newell (The Journal of Geology, 1936, XLIV(1):1-31). The article contains
pictures of many plants and of a fossil scorpion. A rock slab containing
two complete branches of the conifer-like plant Walchia piniformis and an
insect wing (the Diaphanopterodean Parabrodia carboniara Carpenter 1933)
is pictured in Moore's "Historical Geology" (Mc-Graw-Hill Co., NY and
London, 1933, p. 380, Fig. 228).
These specimens should all be in the Dyke Museum of Natural History at KU. I have not to date been to the museum to photograph them.
A brief table comparing the biotic features of a number of Paleozoic conifer-rich sites, including Garnett, Kansas, Hamilton, Kansas, Kinney, New Mexico, and Carrizo Arroyo, New Mexico, can be found in S. H. Mamay & G. Mapes, 1992, "Early Virgilian plant megafossils from the Kinney Brick Company Quarry, Manzanita Mountains, New Mexico", pp. 61-85 In J. Zidek (Editor), Geology and paleontology of the Kinney Brick Quarry, Late Pennsylvanian, central New Mexico, Bull. 138, New Mexico Bureau of Mines and Mineral Resources, Socorro, NM.
Many of the insects of the "Kansas Coal
Measures" are cockroaches. E. H. Sellards (1903, "Discovery of
fossil insects in the Permian of Kansas", Am. J. Sci. (series 4),
16:323-324) compared the Dickinson County Permian insect fauna with those of the
Kansas Carboniferous by stating: "A considerable number of insects had
previously been obtained from the Coal Measures near Lawrence, Kansas, mostly by
the University Geological Survey of Kansas. The insects from
...[Elmo]...seem on the whole very different from those of the Lawrence shales
and other Coal Measure deposits...Cockroaches at the new locality [Elmo] are
much in the minority."In 1904, Sellards reported on "A study of the structure of Paleozoic cockroaches, with descriptions of new forms from the Coal Measures" (Am. J. Sci. (4th Series), 18(104):113-134 & 18(105):213-227 + plate I). He noted: "Almost all the American material preserving the body structure has come either from the Middle or Lower Coal Measures at Mazon Creek, Illinois, or from the Upper Coal Measures at Lawrence, Kansas. In the spring of 1901, the writer discovered the presence of fossil insects among plants collected by Mr. Martin and himself, from the Haverkampf farm near Lawrence¶. ... ¶ A single specimen from a nearby locality in the same formation, found many years earlier by Mr. Joseph Savage, was sent to Lacoe and subsequently described by Scudder as Etoblattina occidentalis (Mem. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., vol. iv, No. 9, p. 410, pl. 32, fig. 4, 1890) ... Subsequent visits to the locality resulted in the discovery of as many as fifty specimens, indicating the comparative abundance of the insects. Later in the summer the Kansas Geological Survey sent a party into the field and obtained in all over two hundred specimens, among them a considerable number of immature forms, or nymphs, or more properly in most cases the sheddings or moults of nymphs ... During the past two summers the writer has almost doubled the original number of specimens from the Lawrence shales, the later collections containing especially instructive nymphs."
In "Cockroaches of the Kansas Coal Measures and of the Kansas Permian" (Univ. Geol. Surv. of Kansas, Vol. 9, Chapt. XI, pp. 501-540 + plates LXXIX - LXXXIII), Sellards states: "Among a small lot of fossil plants obtained in 1878 or 1879 from the old fair-grounds one mile east of Lawrence, Kans., by the early geologist and collector, Mr. Joseph Savage, was found a single cockroach wing. This specimen ... Etoblattina occidentalis, remained for more than twenty-nine years the only fossil insect known from the Kansas Paleozoic. During the spring of 1901 insects were rediscovered in the Le Roy shales on the Haverkampf farm, three miles southeast of Lawrence. They were found here among a small lot of fossil plants collected from this locality by Mr. H. T. Martin and the writer. It was found later that the Le Roy shales held insects in various localities about Lawrence."
Another site near Lawrence is at Lone Star Lake, where Scott Garrett (personal communication, 1999) found the type specimen of the Palaeodictyopteran: Lycodus garretti Carpenter 1992 (F. M. Carpenter, "Studies on North American Carboniferous Insects. 8. New Palaeodictyoptera from Kansas, USA", Psyche, 99(2-3)). Mr. Garrett reports having taken a xiphosuran and a spider there as well as many plant fossils. A photo of this specimen is on Scott's web page at the Eastern Missouri Society for Paleontology site: http://www.mofossils.com/scottspics.html
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