US-Kansas-McAllaster-Schoolhouse-panorama v1

McAllaster is a

ghost town A ghost town, deserted city, extinct town, or abandoned city is an abandoned settlement, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings and infrastructure such as roads. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economi ...

Logan County, Kansas Logan County is a county located in the U.S. state of Kansas. Its county seat and largest city is Oakley. As of the 2020 census, the county population was 2,762. The county was named for John Logan, a general during the American Civil ...

, United States.

History

McAllaster was

plat In the United States, a plat ( or ) (plan) is a cadastral map, drawn to scale, showing the divisions of a piece of land. United States General Land Office surveyors drafted township plats of Public Lands Survey System, Public Lands Surveys to ...

ted in 1887. The McAllaster post office was discontinued in 1953. One house is all that remains of this former community.

Paleontology

McAllaster is mainly known for its mound bearing its name, the McAllaster Butte, where the first known fossils of the famous

plesiosaur The Plesiosauria or plesiosaurs are an Order (biology), order or clade of extinct Mesozoic marine reptiles, belonging to the Sauropterygia. Plesiosaurs first appeared in the latest Triassic Period (geology), Period, possibly in the Rhaetian st ...

Elasmosaurus ''Elasmosaurus'' () is a genus of plesiosaur that lived in North America during the Campanian stage of the Late Cretaceous period, at about 80.6 to 77million years ago. The first specimen was discovered in 1867 near Fort Wallace, Kansas, US, and ...

'' were discovered in 1867. Other fossils possibly belonging to this latter have been discovered since, and the locality is dated to the

Campanian The Campanian is the fifth of six ages of the Late Cretaceous epoch on the geologic timescale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). In chronostratigraphy, it is the fifth of six stages in the Upper Cretaceous Series. Campa ...

stage Stage, stages, or staging may refer to: Arts and media Acting * Stage (theatre), a space for the performance of theatrical productions * Theatre, a branch of the performing arts, often referred to as "the stage" * ''The Stage'', a weekly Brit ...

of the

Upper Cretaceous The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the more recent of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''cret ...

History

Paleontology

See also

References

Further reading