Author Archives: Mark Wilson

About Mark Wilson

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 trepostome bryozoan from the Upper Ordovician of northern Kentucky

Mark Wilson December 15, 2013 1:26 am

First, what U.S. state does this delicious little bryozoan resemble? It’s so close I can even pick out Green Bay. This is Heterotrypa frondosa (d’Orbigny, 1850), a trepostome bryozoan from the Corryville Formation (Upper Ordovician) in Covington, Kentucky. I collected … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: Echinoid fragments from the Upper Carboniferous of southern Nevada

Mark Wilson December 8, 2013 1:18 am

  This rock has been in my Invertebrate Paleontology course teaching collection since I arrived in Wooster. I collected it way back when I was doing my fieldwork for my dissertation on the biostratigraphy and paleoecology of the Bird Spring … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: An encrusted cobble from the Upper Ordovician of Kentucky

Mark Wilson December 1, 2013 1:21 am

In 1984 I pulled the above specimen from a muddy ditch during a pouring rain near the confluence of Gunpowder Creek and the Ohio River in Boone County, northern Kentucky. It changed my life. This limestone cobble eroded out of … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A crinoid calyx from the Lower Carboniferous of Iowa

Mark Wilson November 24, 2013 1:20 am

In honor of Echinoderm Week for my Invertebrate Paleontology course, we have a beautiful crinoid calyx (or crown, or just “head”) on a slab from the Burlington Limestone (Lower Carboniferous, Osagean) found near Burlington, Iowa. I inherited this fossil when … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A long scleractinian coral from the Middle Jurassic of Israel

Mark Wilson November 17, 2013 1:35 am

Just one image for this week’s fossil, but we make up for the numbers in image length! The above fossil with the alternating “saw teeth” is the scleractinian coral Enallhelia d’Orbigny, 1849. It is a rare component of the diverse … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A colonial scleractinian coral from the Pliocene of Cyprus

Mark Wilson November 10, 2013 1:58 am

This week’s fossil is another from the collection made in 1996 on a Keck Geology Consortium expedition to Cyprus with Steve Dornbos as a Wooster student. Steve and I found a spectacular undescribed coral reef in the Nicosia Formation (Pliocene) … Continue reading →

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Citizen scientist to the rescue (in more ways than one)

Mark Wilson November 9, 2013 6:16 pm

NEW LONDON, OHIO–The Wooster paleontologists spent a pleasant afternoon with our favorite amateur fossil collector Brian Bade. Brian has been mentioned in this blog previously for the many important fossils he has found and donated. He is a spectacular citizen … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Very common orthocerid nautiloids from the Siluro-Devonian of Morocco

Mark Wilson November 3, 2013 1:39 am

If you’ve been to a rock shop, or even googled “fossil”, you’ve seen these beautiful and ubiquitous objects. They are polished sections through a nautiloid known as “Orthoceras“. We put quotes around the genus name because with these views it … Continue reading →

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Wooster Geologists at GSA 2013: Last one standing

Mark Wilson October 30, 2013 4:05 pm

And that would be me. This morning I gave a talk about a project Paul Taylor and I have been working on for about two years. In fact, it was about a year ago that I was in the Smithsonian … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Team Utah completes its presentations at the 2013 GSA meeting in Denver

Mark Wilson October 29, 2013 8:28 am

DENVER, COLORADO–Tricia Hall (’14) stands before her 2013 Geological Society of America poster: “Petrologic and kinematic analysis of deformation bands in the Late Cretaceous Sixmile Canyon Formation, central Utah“. She worked hard this summer with Dr. Shelley Judge pounding away … Continue reading →

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