Historically Significant Sternberg Plant Fossil Leaf Collection

Description: Description: This is a most unique opportunity to own a piece of paleontological history. These specimens were collected by Charles Hazelius Sternberg in 1897 and are part of a collection sold to the University of Iowa in 1898 for then then-munificent sum of $350. Charles H. Sternberg was the patriarch of a family of commercial fossil collectors who with his sons Charlie, George, and Eli dominated the scene for commercial collecting for upwards of 100 years. Charles H. got his commercial start with a $300 check from Edward Drinker Cope, and collected for both him and Cope’s archrival O. C. Marsh for several years. He and his sons supplied many scientific institutions with specimens over the years. To me, the family’s crowning achievements were the discovery of a pair of Hadrosaur “mummies”, one of which is on display in the American Museum of Natural History, New York, and the Senckenberg Museum, Frankfurt, Germany. Their most famous specimen, however, is inarguably the Fish-Within-A-Fish on display at the Sternberg Museum in Hays, Kansas which shows a 4 meter Xiphactinus with a 2 meter Gillicus contained within its stomach. George started collecting plant nodules much like these before he was 20, and over the years both donated and sold many specimens to museums worldwide. These were collected by Sternberg himself, hand-prepared to trim the nodules, and then carefully placed in relief using a fine pin. Interestingly, Sternberg never kept any for himself, preferring that they be distributed to institutions worldwide to further the cause of Science. These specimens were de-acessioned in the 1960s, and passed into private hands. Hopefully, the lucky collector who obtains them will treasure them as much as Sternberg himself did both for their beauty and their historical significance to paleontology.

Ref: Sternberg, Charles H. The Life of a Fossil Hunter, 1909, pp 25 ff.