Frank Springer (paleontologist)

Frank Springer (born June 17, 1848 in Wapello , Iowa , † September 22, 1927 in Las Vegas , New Mexico ) was an American lawyer and paleontologist .

Springer, who had studied law at Iowa State University and was admitted to the bar in Iowa in 1869, made the acquaintance of Charles Wachsmuth in Burlington and subsequently cooperated with him in publications on fossil sea lilies, on which he became a leading expert. In 1873 he moved to the New Mexico Territory , where he was one of the most famous personalities who, as an attorney for the Maxwell Company (later its president), successfully defended the Maxwell Land Grant in 1887 before the Supreme Court in a trial against the US government. It was about the legitimacy of Lucien Maxwell's (1818-1875) huge land holdings in New Mexico, the largest private land estate in US history at 6,900 square kilometers. In 1870 Maxwell sold a large part of it to a company (Maxwell Company, first by British, then Dutch investors), which led to the Colfax County War .

After making a fortune out of it, he retired from legal practice and devoted himself to palaeontology (alongside his cattle ranch). He was associated with the Smithsonian Institution as a paleontologist . He also worked in archeology, was a member of the Archaeological Institute of America and patron of the School of American Archeology at Santa Fe .

In 1890 he became president of the New Mexico Bar Association. He was elected twice to the territorial parliament of New Mexico. The town of Springer in Colfax County is named after him.

Fonts

• with Wachsmuth: Revision of Palaeocrinoidea, 3 parts, Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. of Philadelphia, 1879 to 1886
• with Wachsmuth: The North American Crinoida Camerata, Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative Zoology 1897, Archive
• Uintacrinus, its structure and relations 1901
• Cleiocrinus 1905
• New American Fossil Crinoids 1911
• Scyphocrinus 1917
• Mysticocrinus 1918
• Dolatocrinus 1921
• Crinoids from Northern Canada 1921
• Pentacrinus from East Indies 1918
• The Crinoidea Flexibilia, Smithsonian Institution 1920, Archives
• Balanocrinus from Mexico 1922
• Tertiary Crinoid from West Indies 1924
• The genus Holopus 1924
• Pentacrinus in Alaska 1925
• Apiocrinus in America 1925
• Unusual forms of fossil crinoics 1926

literature

• David L. Caffey: Frank Springer and New Mexico: From the Colfax County War to the Emergence of Modern Santa Fe, Texas A&M University Press 2007
• Obituary by Charles Schuchert , Geological Society of America Bulletin, Vol. 39, 1927, pp. 65-80
• William Keleher: The Maxwell Land Grant, New York, 2nd edition 1964

Web links

• Frank Springer in the database of Find a Grave (English)