Editorial Type:
Article Category: Research Article
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Online Publication Date: 05 Nov 2007

Benjamin F. Mudge: The First Kansas Geologist

Page Range: 103 – 111
DOI: 10.17704/eshi.3.2.02034748x0446121
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Benjamin Franklin Mudge (1817-79), originally from Massachusetts, was appointed State Geologist and Director of the First Geological Survey of Kansas in 1864. After failing to be reappointed in 1865 he became Professor of Natural Science at Kansas State Agricultural College, Manhattan, whose president, Joseph Denison, was an old friend and fellow Methodist. Mudge taught courses in all areas of science and spent his summers geologizing in western Kansas. An avid collector, he sent fossil specimens to Edward Cope, O. C. Marsh, and others. In the summer of 1872 he discovered a Cretaceous bird, Ichthyornis dispar, described by Marsh at Yale as the first fossil bird known to have teeth. In 1873 the KSAC regents replaced Denison by John Anderson, who dismissed Mudge and two others in February 1874 after they complained to members of the legislature about misuse of college funds and tried unsuccessfully to defeat legislative confirmation of some of the regents. Mudge then was employed by Marsh to collect fossil vertebrates (1874-77). Assisted by Samuel Williston and other former students, he sent to Marsh a large number of specimens of marine reptiles, pterodactyls, and birds from the Cretaceous beds of western Kansas. In 1877 he was sent to Colorado, where he supervised the quarrying of dinosaur bones at Cañon City. Strongly religious and a staunch opponent of slavery and alcohol, Mudge was regarded highly as a teacher and collector. He published in 1875 a description of the geology of Kansas which contained the first geological map of the State. He also was cofounder and first president of the Kansas Academy of Science.

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