Tag Archives: Devonian

Citizen scientist to the rescue (in more ways than one)

Mark Wilson November 9, 2013 6:16 pm

NEW LONDON, OHIO–The Wooster paleontologists spent a pleasant afternoon with our favorite amateur fossil collector Brian Bade. Brian has been mentioned in this blog previously for the many important fossils he has found and donated. He is a spectacular citizen … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Very common orthocerid nautiloids from the Siluro-Devonian of Morocco

Mark Wilson November 3, 2013 1:39 am

If you’ve been to a rock shop, or even googled “fossil”, you’ve seen these beautiful and ubiquitous objects. They are polished sections through a nautiloid known as “Orthoceras“. We put quotes around the genus name because with these views it … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A strophomenid brachiopod from the Middle Devonian of Michigan

Mark Wilson September 1, 2013 1:43 am

Every year in the first class session of my Invertebrate Paleontology course I give my students each an unknown fossil. It must be something relatively common so that I can give 20 nearly-identical specimens, and it is ideally of a … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: Encrusting tubes from the Devonian of Michigan

Mark Wilson February 17, 2013 1:52 am

The scanning electron microscope (SEM) image above shows the tubes of the encrusting group known as hederelloids. They are among my favorite fossils. I was reminded of them recently while reading this advertisement for a novel in which, to my … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A spiriferid brachiopod (Middle Devonian of northwestern Ohio)

Mark Wilson October 14, 2012 1:39 am

I begin my Invertebrate Paleontology course by giving each student a common fossil to identify “by any means necessary”. This year I gave everyone a gray little brachiopod, one of which is shown above. They did pretty well. Kevin Silver … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: a beautiful phacopid trilobite (Middle Devonian of Ohio, USA)

Mark Wilson August 5, 2012 1:57 am

Trilobites are always favorite fossils, especially big bug-eyed ones like Phacops rana (Green, 1832) shown above. It is, in fact, the state fossil of Pennsylvania after a petition from schoolchildren in 1988. This specimen is from the Middle Devonian of … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: An asteroid trace fossil from the Devonian of northeastern Ohio

Mark Wilson February 12, 2012 1:31 am

It is pretty obvious what made this excellent trace fossil: an asteroid echinoderm. (The term “asteroid” sounds odd here, but it is the technical term for a typical sea star.) The above is Asteriacites stelliformis Osgood, 1970, from the Chagrin … Continue reading →

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Exploring the Silica Formation (Middle Devonian) in Northwestern Ohio

Mark Wilson October 22, 2011 7:25 pm

PAULDING, OHIO–There’s nothing like the stirring rings of 50 geologic hammers in the morning. Today I was a guest of the North Coast Fossil Club and my friend Brian Bade in a quarry exposing the Middle Devonian limestones and shales. … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A tabulate coral (Middle Devonian of New York)

Mark Wilson September 4, 2011 1:43 am

This week’s specimen is from a group of fossils I gave my Invertebrate Paleontology students as “unknowns” to identify. Since it is their very first week of class I expected them to struggle, but many did remarkably well. (Congratulations to … Continue reading →

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Quality time with a Polish microscope

Mark Wilson June 21, 2011 5:06 pm

SOSNOWIEC, POLAND–A day in the lab with my colleague Michał Zatoń at the University of Silesia. We sorted through two very different paleontological problems with a microscope and a lot of hand waving. The first task was to come up … Continue reading →

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