Benson Rd., 3 mi. SE of Morris, Morris, Illinois. County/parish: Grundy.
Added to the National Register of Historic Places September 25, 1997. NRIS 97001272.
1 contributing site.Also known as:
The Mazon Creek fossil beds are a conservation lagerstätte found near Morris, in Grundy County, Illinois. The fossils are preserved in ironstone concretions, formed approximately 309 million years ago in the mid-Pennsylvanian epoch of the Carboniferous period. These concretions frequently preserve both hard and soft tissues of animal and plant materials, as well as many soft-bodied organisms that do not normally fossilize. The quality, quantity and diversity of fossils in the area, known since the mid-nineteenth century, make the Mazon Creek lagerstätte important to paleontologists attempting to reconstruct the paleoecology of the sites. The locality was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1997.
(read more...)National Park Service documentation: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/28891598