Monthly Archives: February 2011

Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: The ‘osses ‘ed clam (Upper Jurassic of southwestern England)

Mark Wilson February 27, 2011 1:16 am

Katherine Nicholson Marenco (’03) and I did delightful fieldwork on the Isle of Portland in Dorset, England, during the summer of 2002. We collected fossils from the famous Portland Limestone (Upper Jurassic) in a series of working quarries. Katherine completed … Continue reading →

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Postcard from Wooster, Ohio

Mark Wilson February 22, 2011 10:01 am

On such a winter’s day.

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A honeycomb coral (Upper Ordovician of southern Indiana)

Mark Wilson February 20, 2011 1:22 am

Polygons are common in nature, whether in two dimensions as desiccation cracks or in three dimensions as with columnar basalt. They result from “closely-packed” disks or tubes. The honeycomb coral (Favosites Lamarck 1816) is one of the best fossil examples … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A brittle star trace fossil from the Jurassic of Utah

Mark Wilson February 13, 2011 1:24 am

This week we have a trace fossil that looks almost exactly like the animal that made it. A trace fossil is evidence of organism activity recorded in the rock record. The photograph above shows one of my favorite specimens: Asteriacites … Continue reading →

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Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin! An Occasion to Celebrate the Teaching of Evolution

Mark Wilson February 12, 2011 11:56 am

It is now a tradition among scientists to celebrate the birthday of the great English naturalist Charles Darwin.  He was born on February 12, 1809 — the very same day Abraham Lincoln entered the world.  (I have images of both … Continue reading →

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Meteorites Observed on the College of Wooster Campus!

mpollock February 8, 2011 5:06 pm

WOOSTER, OH – So the meteorites didn’t exactly fall from the sky today, but our GeoClub speaker let us see some samples from his own meteorite collection. Dr. Ed Young, UCLA Cosmochemist and Wooster Geology Alum (’81), gave a fascinating … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A chewed-up leaf (Upper Cretaceous of Kansas)

Mark Wilson February 6, 2011 1:17 am

This week’s fossil is a departure from our usual set of marine invertebrate animals. Above is a leaf of Viburnum lesquereuxii from the Dakota Formation of Ellsworth County, Kansas. The rocks enclosing it are from the Upper Cretaceous Cenomanian Stage, … Continue reading →

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Theory to Practice on Ice

gwiles February 1, 2011 8:34 pm

A group from the Wooster community, the University of Cincinnati, The College of Wooster and St. Lawrence University assembled in Wooster for the weekend to mount an expedition to recover many meters of lake mud from the bottom of Round … Continue reading →

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Because ice is a mineral …

Mark Wilson February 1, 2011 10:07 am

… we should record this morning’s ice storm in Wooster. You can read about the surprising properties of water ice as well on Wikipedia. This makes me long for hot desert days.

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