Tag Archives: Fossil of the Week

Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A large trepostome bryozoan on a nautiloid conch (Upper Ordovician of northern Kentucky)

Mark Wilson March 17, 2017 12:01 am

This massive trepostome bryozoan, a solid lump of biogenic calcite, was collected earlier this week on the latest Team Cincinnati field expedition into the treasure-filled Upper Ordovician underlying and surrounding that city. Wooster students Matt Shearer, Luke Kosowatz and I … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: Encrusting craniid brachiopods (Upper Ordovician of southeastern Indiana)

Mark Wilson March 10, 2017 12:01 am

The two irregular patches above are brachiopods known as Petrocrania scabiosa encrusting the ventral valve of yet another brachiopod (Rafinesquina). That species name “scabiosa” is evocative if not a little unpleasant — it is also the root of the English … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: Mysterious tentaculitids (Devonian of Maryland)

Mark Wilson March 3, 2017 12:03 am

The sharp little conical fossils above are common Paleozoic fossils, especially in the Devonian. They are tentaculitids now most commonly placed in the Class Tentaculitoidea Ljashenko 1957. Tentaculitids appeared in the Ordovician and disappeared sometime around the end of the … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A scaphitid ammonite (Late Cretaceous of Mississippi)

Mark Wilson February 24, 2017 12:01 am

The beauty above is Discoscaphites iris (Conrad, 1858) from the Owl Creek Formation of Ripley, Mississippi. Megan Innis and I collected it during our expedition to the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary in the southern United States last summer. It is a significant … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A stromatoporoid (Middle Devonian of central Ohio)

Mark Wilson February 17, 2017 12:01 am

Stromatoporoids are very common fossils in the Silurian and Devonian of Ohio and Indiana, especially in carbonate rocks like the Columbus Limestone (from which the above specimen was collected). Wooster geologists encountered them frequently on our Estonia expeditions in the … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A receptaculitid (Middle Ordovician of Missouri)

Mark Wilson February 10, 2017 12:02 am

This week’s fossil is a long-standing paleontological mystery. Above is a receptaculitid from the Kimmswick Limestone (Middle Ordovician) near Ozora, Missouri. I think I found it on a field trip with Frank Koucky in the distant mists of my student … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Peanut worms from the Silurian of Illinois

Mark Wilson February 3, 2017 12:01 am

This week’s fossils are a set of cool sipunculan worms from the Lockport Shale Member of the Racine Formation (Wenlockian, Silurian) of Blue Island, Illinois (which, it turns out, is not an island.). This is Lecthaylus gregarius Weller, 1925. (There … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: Ammonite septa from the Upper Cretaceous of South Dakota

Mark Wilson January 27, 2017 12:01 am

This week we have an ammonite from the Pierre Shale (Upper Cretaceous, Campanian-Maastrichtian) of southwestern South Dakota. It was collected on a wonderful field expedition in June 2008 with my friend Paul Taylor (The Natural History Museum, London) and my … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Revisiting a pair of hyoliths from the Middle Ordovician of Estonia

Mark Wilson January 20, 2017 12:01 am

We met these modest internal molds of the mysterious hyoliths about five years ago. With a dramatic new development in hyolith studies, they are worth seeing again. These fossils are internal molds (the sediment that filled the shell) of of … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: New review paper on architectural design of trace fossils

Mark Wilson January 13, 2017 12:01 am

Last year my friend Luis Buatois led a massive project to review essentially all trace fossil invertebrate ichnogenera (523!) to place them in a series architectural design categories (79). This is a new way to assess patterns of ichnodisparity (variability … Continue reading →

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