Author Archives: mwilson

About mwilson

Mark Wilson is an emeritus Professor of Geology at The College of Wooster. He specializes in invertebrate paleontology, carbonate sedimentology, and stratigraphy. He also is an expert on pseudoscience, especially creationism.

Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A fragmentary rostroconch from the Middle Devonian of Ohio

mwilson November 27, 2015 12:15 am

Not all of our featured fossils are particularly beautiful, or even entire, but they are interesting in some way. Above is the broken cross-section of a rostroconch mollusk known as Hippocardia Brown, 1843. It was found somewhere in Ohio by … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A tall brachiopod from the Devonian of western Russia

mwilson November 20, 2015 12:01 am

In the summer of 2009 I had a field adventure in Russia. It was an extraordinary time. I learned considerable amounts of Russian geology and paleontology, of course, and was immersed in the Russian geological culture. Along the way I … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A striated brachiopod from the Silurian of New York

mwilson November 13, 2015 12:04 am

Sometimes it is a Fossil of the Week simply because it is new to me. The brachiopods above are abundant in a thin layer of shells within the Lewiston Member of the Rochester Shale (Silurian, Wenlockian) in western New York … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: Reptile tracks from the Lower Permian of southern Nevada

mwilson November 6, 2015 12:02 am

Always lead with your most interesting image. The fossil here is the thin orange slab of siltstone underneath my magnificent Komodo Dragon model. Here is the slab itself. On the far right and the far left you can see two … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Pseudofossils of the Week: Cone-in-cone structures from southern Ohio

mwilson October 30, 2015 12:04 am

Author’s note: James Chesire convinced me through the comments and later correspondence that what we actually have here are cone-in-cone structures, not shatter cones. I’ve thus changed the title but have left the post below in its original form. They … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil (Maybe) of the Week: Kinneyia ripples

mwilson October 23, 2015 12:01 am

While hiking through the Niagara Gorge on a field trip in August, my friend Andrej Ernst of the University of Kiel found the above block of siltstone from the Grimsby Formation (Silurian) with unusual small-scale ripples in a patch. Carl … Continue reading →

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Greetings from a Wooster Geologist in Scotland

mwilson October 18, 2015 9:18 am

Annette Hilton (’17) is having a great time in Scotland, where she is spending a semester abroad. She had a chance to go on a geography field trip recently to the Isle of Kerrera, in the Inner Hebrides off the … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: an upside-down nautiloid from the Devonian of Wisconsin

mwilson October 16, 2015 12:01 am

This lump of a fossil in Wooster’s teaching collection requires some explanation. It is not particularly well preserved, but it is our only representative of an interesting group of nautiloid cephalopods. The label that came with it says it is … Continue reading →

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Wooster Geologists on the Gettysburg Battlefield

mwilson October 12, 2015 11:57 pm

Gloria and I and our daughter Amy took advantage of the first days of Fall Break at Wooster to visit the Gettysburg Battlefield in Pennsylvania, about a 5.5 hour drive from home. The weather was spectacularly beautiful, as you can … Continue reading →

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A Wooster Geologist in Tanzania

mwilson October 10, 2015 9:54 am

Oscar Mmari (’14) is a Wooster Geology alumnus who did field work in Israel as part of his Independent Study. After his graduation he has had excellent geological experience in Africa and Europe, most involving mining and other resource-related industries. … Continue reading →

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