Dr. Paul Tasch, Emeritus Professor in the Dept. of Geology at Wichita State University, studied the ecology of Kansas during Permian times (Ref’s. 42-48).  He described the region of central Kansas and north central Oklahoma during the Permian (Ref. 46) as being  “ . . . a coastal flat with relict puddles, ponds, and even small-scale lakes that gradually freshened as the epeiric sea regressed.  Marine encroachments over this coastal area occurred between times of recurrent fresh-water biofacies.”

The Wellington Formation, the shale sequence of sedimentary rocks deposited across Kansas and Oklahoma during the Permian, is about 700 feet thick.  Dr. Tasch was able to correlate layers of this formation from location to location in the area and to show that insect beds recurred at approximately 100-foot intervals.   The region is generally covered by relatively recent (Quaternary) deposits, and the Permian rocks are only occasionally visible as outcrops.  The most prolific and famous of the insect-bearing exposed layers are those in the Midco, Oklahoma area (Noble and Kay Counties) and the Elmo, Kansas beds (Dickinson County).  The two areas are each incredibly productive, both in terms of quantity and quality of fossils.   About 8,000 specimens were taken from Midco between 1940 and 1957 (Ref. 18).  The Elmo site yielded nearly 15,000 specimens (detailed below) in the century since its discovery.   One of the world’s authorities on fossil insects, Dr. Frank Carpenter of Harvard (we’ll learn more about him later), studied and compared the two sites:  “ . . .  the Elmo beds in Kansas and the Midco beds in Oklahoma originated as lakes about 140 miles apart.  Both deposits . . . were apparently contemporaneous.  However, there appear to have been differences in the environments of the lakes . . . The one in Kansas contained fresh water, derived from an earlier swamp, with plants growing close to the water’s edge and with some insect nymphs living in the water.  The Midco lake was essentially a playa, containing algae and Conchostraca [clam shrimps]; plants did not grow near it and insect nymphs did not live in it.” (Ref 18).