Tag Archives: Ohio

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 Fossils of the Week: Beautiful molds on a concretion (Lower Carboniferous of Ohio)

Mark Wilson September 30, 2012 1:41 am

Kit Price (’13) was exploring a local creek on a Geomorphology course field trip north of Wooster led by Dr. Greg Wiles. Like the excellent paleontologist Kit is, her eyes continually searched the pebbles, cobbles, slabs and outcrops for that … 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: A mastodon tusk (Late Pleistocene of Holmes County, Ohio)

Mark Wilson June 24, 2012 1:00 am

This long and weathered tusk sits in a display case outside my office. It is from the American Mastodon (Mammut americanum) and was found many decades ago in Holmes County, just south of Wooster. A tooth found with it was … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: a trilobite burrow (Upper Ordovician of Ohio)

Mark Wilson May 27, 2012 1:43 am

This is one of my favorite trace fossils. Rusophycus pudicum Hall, 1852, is its formal name. It was made by a trilobite digging down into the seafloor sediment back during the Ordovician Period in what is now southern Ohio. It … Continue reading →

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Now this is field trip weather

Mark Wilson May 1, 2012 3:30 pm

WOOSTER, OHIO–It is now difficult to believe that we were measuring stratigraphic sections in a sleety thunderstorm on Saturday. Today the Tuesday lab of my Sedimentology & Stratigraphy course visited a local outcrop of the Logan Formation (Lower Carboniferous) to … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: the classic bioclaustration (Upper Ordovician of Ohio)

Mark Wilson April 29, 2012 1:52 am

We’re looking at two fossils above. One is the bryozoan Peronopora, the major skeletal structure. The second is the odd series of scalloped holes in its surface. These are a trace fossil called Catellocaula vallata Palmer and Wilson 1988. They … Continue reading →

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A very damp field trip

Mark Wilson April 28, 2012 6:17 pm

FAIRBORN, OHIO–I actually used to brag about the great weather on my class field trips. The hubris! Today Shelley Judge and I took our combined Sedimentology & Stratigraphy and Structural Geology classes to Oakes Park Quarry near Dayton for a … Continue reading →

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Wet and Cold Wooster Geologists in the Silurian of Central Ohio

Mark Wilson April 21, 2012 4:26 pm

DAYTON, OHIO–It was 37°F and raining this morning as three stalwart Wooster Geology students and I worked in a muddy quarry near Fairborn, Ohio (N 39.81472°, W 83.99471°). Our task was to scout out a beautiful exposure of the Brassfield … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A scale tree root in its own soil (Upper Carboniferous of Ohio)

Mark Wilson April 15, 2012 1:48 am

Last week a local man, Larry Stauffer, brought in the above fossil for identification and then kindly donated it to the department. It is part of the root system of Lepidodendron, the “scale tree” of the Carboniferous Period. What is … Continue reading →

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