Discovery
The fossilized cycad beds were discovered in 1892 by F. H. Cole of Hot Springs, South Dakota, in the 120-million-year-old Dakota Sandstone Formation, near Minnekahta. Cole sent photographs of the fossils to Professor Henry Newton, a geologist at the Smithsonian Institution. Professor Thomas MacBride of the University of Iowa published the first description of the site in 1893. There were believed to be large deposits of Cretaceous cycad fossils. (Cycads are plants resembling ferns, although not related to them. The ones at this site were tree-sized.)
In 1920, Yale paleobotanist George Reber Wieland obtained the fossil cycad-rich land under the Homestead Act "in order that the cycads might not fall into unworthy hands". Two years later he offered to return the land to the federal government if a national monument could be established to protect the fossils.
Read more about this topic: Fossil Cycad National Monument
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