Monthly Archives: November 2017

Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: Echinoid bite marks from the Upper Cretaceous of southwestern France

Above is another beautiful image from Paul Taylor’s paleontological lab at the Natural History Museum, London. It is one of our fossil oysters (Pycnodonte vesicularis) from the French Type Campanian collected in the town of Archiac in southwestern France on … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Barnacle borings from the Cretaceous of southwestern France

Small comma-shaped trace fossils this week in a Cretaceous (Upper Campanian) oyster (Pycnodonte vesicularis) from the Aubeterre Formation of southwestern France. (Locality C/W-747, Plage des Nonnes, to be exact.) These are borings produced by barnacles, which are sedentary crustaceans more … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Encrusting cyanobacteria from the Upper Ordovician of the Cincinnati region — now published

[This week’s post is a repeat from last year, with some modifications. The paper Paul Taylor and I wrote on these microbial beauties has just appeared this week in the latest issue of the journal Palaios. A pdf is yours … Continue reading

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How to Combat a Drought

About a month ago, I wrote on this blog about an exceptionally dry late summer for Wooster.  It was dry enough to put much of northeast Ohio in a moderate drought.  But of course the moment I published that blog … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A Middle Jurassic trace fossil from southwestern Utah

Time for a trace fossil! This is one of my favorite ichnogenera (the trace fossil equivalent of a biological genus). It is Gyrochorte Heer, 1865, from the Middle Jurassic (Bajocian) Carmel Formation of southwestern Utah (near Gunlock; locality C/W-142). It … Continue reading

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West Antarctic mantle plumes: A lesson in ice flow and science communication

Newsweek published a scary-looking headline yesterday: “NASA DISCOVERS MANTLE PLUME ALMOST AS HOT AS YELLOWSTONE SUPERVOLCANO THAT’S MELTING ANTARCTICA FROM BELOW.” It’s a scary idea, right? That heat that drives Yellowstone’s steam vents, boiling hot springs, and explosive geysers is … Continue reading

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#GSA2017 Wrap Up

It’s hard to believe that we were at the 2017 GSA Annual Meeting in Seattle, Washington just last week. Once again, the Wooster Geologists had a strong showing.  

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: The tiniest of brachiopods (Middle Jurassic of Utah)

While preparing for this summer’s expedition to the Middle Jurassic of southwestern Utah, I found this specimen in our collection from the 1990s. You may be able to just make out the wedge-shaped outline of a mytilid-like bivalve with several … Continue reading

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