In the Cretaceous period, a landslide in South Dakota buried a lot of cycad plants. They eventually turned to silicate fossils, and gradually, erosion brought them back to the surface of the earth. As the American West was settled, people found them and thought they were pretty neat.
One of those people was George Reber Wieland, who was so impressed with the fossil cycad he found in 1898 that he changed his career from paleontology to paleobotany to study the fossils. He spent years working to protect the South Dakota site, until Fossil Cycad National Monument was declared in 1922.Unfortunately for Fossil Cycad, its official recognition as an American landmark came at a difficult time for the country overall. “It…
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