Tag Archives: Texas

Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Silicified productid brachiopods from the Permian of West Texas

The three beauties above are productid brachiopods from the Road Canyon Formation (Middle Permian, Roadian, approximately 270 million years old) in the Glass Mountains of southwestern Texas. They are part of a series we’ve done on the silicified fauna of … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Silicified chonetid brachiopods from the Permian of West Texas

Above are four valves of the chonetid brachiopod Dyoros planiextensus Cooper and Grant, 1975. They are preserved by silicification and were recovered from a block of the Road Canyon Formation (Roadian Stage of the Guadalupian Series of the Permian System) … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A silicified rhynchonellid brachiopod from the Permian of West Texas

Sometimes fossils can be more useful when broken than whole. Above is a much-abused rhynchonellid brachiopod from the Road Canyon Formation (Middle Permian, Roadian, about 270 million years old) found in the Glass Mountains of southwestern Texas. It is part … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Silicified sclerobionts (Middle Permian of southwestern Texas)

During my work at the National Museum of Natural History last week, I had my research desk amongst the many cabinets housing the famous Permian brachiopod collection made by the eminent paleontologist Richard E. Grant (1927–1995). Most of these specimens … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A giant oyster (Eocene of Texas)

It’s no ordinary oyster, of course, because it comes from Texas. It certainly is the largest oyster I’ve ever seen. Wooster received it as part of a large donation in 2010. (You can see students studying it in this previous … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A new microconchid genus and species (Permian of Texas)

Two years ago I was invited to Texas by Tom Yancey (Texas A&M) to look at some curious wiggly tubular fossils in the Lower Permian (about 280 million years old). They form small reefs a meter or so across and … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: an aberrant brachiopod (Permian of Texas)

Funny word to apply to a fossil: aberrant, meaning “deviating from the normal”. It’s an old-fashioned word rarely used these days, primarily because we have a hard time defining “normal”. It was the word used when I was introduced to … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: Reef-forming brachiopods (Middle Permian of southwestern Texas)

In my early days of teaching paleontology I had an enthusiastic trading program with colleagues around the country. I would supply fine fossils from the Upper Ordovician of southern Ohio for what I considered exotic specimens from elsewhere. In one … Continue reading

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Scene from the lab

WOOSTER, OHIO–I spent a good part of the day in the paleontology lab of Lisa Park, one of our accomplished Wooster Geology alumni who teaches at the University of Akron.  We took scanning electron microscope images of microconchid specimens I … Continue reading

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A very bored Permian brachiopod

COLLEGE STATION, TEXAS–I never get tired of that too-obvious joke. I found the above productid brachiopod on the last outcrop of our little Texas expedition. It has been drilled by barnacles, which leave a distinctive slit-shaped hole with a tiny … Continue reading

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