This wonderful trilobite was found last month by Olivia Brown (’15), a student on the Wooster Geology Department’s glorious field trip to the Mojave Desert. Olivia collected it at Emigrant Pass in the Nopah Range of Inyo County, southeastern California. It comes from the Pyramid Shale Member of the Carrara Formation and is uppermost Lower […]
There are two common fossil types that begin with “strom” and look roughly alike to the untrained eye. One is the stromatoporoid, which is a calcareous sponge, and the other is the stromatolite, which is a layered structure produced by photosynthetic bacteria. I hadn’t seen them together until our expedition to the Silurian of Estonia […]
KÄINA, ESTONIA–Today the Wooster/OSU team crossed the strait between Hiiumaa and Saaremaa to visit some earlier sites one last time on this trip. The Ohio State paleontologists stayed on the northern part of Saaremaa to look for crinoids and Panga, Ninase and Undva Cliffs; the Wooster geologists went farther south and west to visit Soeginina […]
KURESSAARE, ESTONIA–Wooster student Richa Ekka now has her Independent Study project. This is a big moment for a Wooster student: choosing the iconic capstone experience to complete the curriculum. Geologists always have delightful choices — so many possible topics and so little time! Richa decided to study the sedimentology and stratigraphy of the Soeginina Beds […]
KURESSAARE, ESTONIA–The Wooster/OSU Estonia team continued to explore the Silurian section on Saaremaa Island today. It was our last day with our friend Olev Vinn, and he showed us the only remaining Silurian outcrop here I have not seen: Kübassaare Cliff in the far east of the island (N 58.43259°, E 023.30978°). The image above […]
WOOSTER, OHIO–Six Wooster geology seniors presented their research to the campus and public this morning in Kauke Hall on the College of Wooster campus. They were among the first posters in the annual Senior Research Symposium in which Independent Study projects are highlighted and celebrated. They did very well — their geology faculty advisors are […]
On Friday afternoon, a group of Wooster geologists participated in an educational outreach program at Wayne Elementary. Marge Forbush, an educator at Wayne always asks the department to come to her classroom twice a year. In the fall, we spend an afternoon talking to the students about volcanoes and earthquakes, while in the spring, we […]
MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA–The first Wooster students presented today at the Geological Society of America annual meeting. Above is Nick Fedorchuk who talked about his work in Estonia studying the Wenlock-Ludlow boundary on Saaremaa Island and its implication for Silurian stratigraphy and depositional environments in Baltica. Rachel Matt (above) presented her work on the Lower Silurian fauna […]
STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN–No paleontological expedition is complete until it includes time in the collections of a museum. No single sampling trip like ours can describe the full diversity of a fossil site, no matter how many days we spend scouring the rocks. A traditional museum will combine the finds of hundreds of scientists over two centuries […]
KURESSAARE, ESTONIA–Editor’s note: The Wooster Geologists in Estonia found enough material, and had enough time, to write abstracts for posters at the Geological Society of America Annual Meeting in Minneapolis this October. The following is from student guest blogger Rachel Matt in the format required for GSA abstracts: PALEOECOLOGY OF THE HILLISTE FORMATION (LOWER SILURIAN, […]