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 Fossils of the Week: an enigmatic set of tubes (Middle Jurassic of Poland)

Mark Wilson August 26, 2012 1:51 am

The fossils this week celebrate the appearance of an article in the latest issue of Palaios authored by an international team led by my good friend and colleague Michał Zatoń (University of Silesia, Poland). The fossils are strange polka-dotted tubes … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: a cameloid footprint (Miocene of California)

Mark Wilson August 19, 2012 1:39 am

This fossil is from near my hometown of Barstow, California. It was collected many years ago loose in talus from the Barstow Formation (Barstovian, Miocene). I note this carefully because today collecting such specimens from the Fossil Beds of the … Continue reading →

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Upside-down and inside-out: Cryptic skeletobiont communities from the Late Ordovician of Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky — An abstract submitted to the Geological Society of America for the 2012 annual meeting

Mark Wilson August 14, 2012 7:10 am

Editor’s note: The Wooster Geologists in Indiana this summer wrote an abstract for the Geological Society of America Annual Meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, this November. The following is from student guest blogger Kit Price in the format required for … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: a bifoliate bryozoan (Upper Ordovician of Indiana, USA)

Mark Wilson August 12, 2012 1:35 am

The specimen above is a species within the trepostome bryozoan genus Peronopora Nicholson, 1881. I don’t know which species because that would require me to slice it open and examine its microscopic skeletal details. (A reason why trepostome bryozoans are … Continue reading →

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Patchiness and ecological structure in a Middle Jurassic equatorial crinoid-brachiopod community (Matmor Formation, Callovian, southern Israel) — An abstract submitted to the Geological Society of America for the 2012 annual meeting

Mark Wilson August 6, 2012 1:42 am

Editor’s note: The Wooster Geologists in Israel this spring wrote abstracts for the Geological Society of America Annual Meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, this November. The following is from student guest blogger Melissa Torma in the format required for GSA … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: a beautiful phacopid trilobite (Middle Devonian of Ohio, USA)

Mark Wilson August 5, 2012 1:57 am

Trilobites are always favorite fossils, especially big bug-eyed ones like Phacops rana (Green, 1832) shown above. It is, in fact, the state fossil of Pennsylvania after a petition from schoolchildren in 1988. This specimen is from the Middle Devonian of … Continue reading →

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A pleasant and productive geological walk in the woods

Mark Wilson August 1, 2012 11:07 pm

WOOSTER, OHIO–One of the best parts of my job is answering questions from the public about rocks and fossils. Now that I’m Secretary of the Paleontological Society, I get queries every day about something or other. (And since my brief … Continue reading →

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Busy Wooster geology labs this summer

Mark Wilson August 1, 2012 6:59 pm

WOOSTER, OHIO–This has been a particularly active summer in Scovel Hall, home of Wooster’s Geology Department. All our fieldwork eventually results in labwork, so our student geologists have been spending quality time with rocksaws, microscopes, computers and x-ray analytical equipment. … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: an encrusted plesiosaur vertebra (Jurassic of England)

Mark Wilson July 29, 2012 1:18 am

The weathered bone pictured above sits on my desk as a treasured memento. It is the centrum of a plesiosaur vertebra. I found it in the Faringdon Sponge Gravels (Lower Cretaceous) of Oxfordshire, England, during my first research leave (1985). … Continue reading →

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Wooster Geologists in Indiana!

Mark Wilson July 28, 2012 10:40 pm

WOOSTER, OHIO–I’ve seen a lot of fossils in my blessedly long time as a paleontologist, and I’ve had the opportunity to study them in many exotic places. I’m often reminded, though, that one of the best preserved and most diverse … Continue reading →

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