Category Archives: Uncategorized

Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: a venerid bivalve (Upper Cretaceous of Jordan)

mwilson September 25, 2011 1:39 am

This summer I joined a team describing a shell bed in the Upper Cretaceous (lower Campanian, about 80 million years old) Wadi Umm Ghudran Formation exposed northeast of Amman, Jordan (at N 32° 09.241′, E 36° 12.960′, to be exact). … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Fossils in the Wild: Invertebrate Paleontology Field Trip

mwilson September 11, 2011 11:06 pm

CAESAR CREEK LAKE, OHIO–The 2011 Invertebrate Paleontology class had a productive field trip on a beautiful Ohio day. Thunderstorms roamed the state, but we saw them only when we were comfortably on the bus. We worked in the emergency spillway … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A tabulate coral (Middle Devonian of New York)

mwilson September 4, 2011 1:43 am

This week’s specimen is from a group of fossils I gave my Invertebrate Paleontology students as “unknowns” to identify. Since it is their very first week of class I expected them to struggle, but many did remarkably well. (Congratulations to … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

Wooster Geologists begin the 2011-2012 school year

mwilson September 1, 2011 2:52 pm

WOOSTER, OHIO–The cheerful group above is the Wooster Geology Club in our traditional start of the year group photograph. (The image was kindly taken by Danielle Reeder.) We are fewer than usual because an unprecedented number of our geology majors … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A trilobite hypostome (Upper Ordovician of southern Ohio)

mwilson August 21, 2011 1:44 am

We had a familiar trilobite last week, so this week we’ll look at a poorly-known part of a trilobite: the hypostome. Above is an incomplete forked, conterminant hypostome of the large trilobite Isotelus. (Isotelus, by the way, is the state … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Field-based Teaching in Northeastern Minnesota

mpollock August 16, 2011 4:28 pm

NORTHEASTERN MINNESOTA – As part of the Cutting Edge workshop on Teaching Mineralogy, Petrology, and Geochemistry, I had the opportunity to participate in a field trip to the Midcontinent Rift System in northeastern Minnesota. You can imagine how exciting this … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A trilobite (Middle Cambrian of Utah)

mwilson August 14, 2011 1:32 am

I’ve avoided having a trilobite as Fossil of the Week because it seems like such a cliché. Everyone knows trilobites, and they are the most common “favorite fossil” (invertebrate, anyway). Plus our best trilobite (seen above) is the most familiar … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Teaching Mineralogy, Petrology, and Geochemistry

mpollock August 10, 2011 5:35 pm

MINNEAPOLIS, MN – If you haven’t been following my twitter feed (http://twitter.com/meagenpollock), you may not know that I’ve been at the 2011 Cutting Edge Workshop on Teaching Mineralogy, Petrology, and Geochemistry (twitter hashtag #sercMPG). Expert educators have gathered to discuss … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Using the iPad in museum work

mwilson August 8, 2011 8:00 pm

COLUMBUS, OHIO–Earlier this summer my colleagues and I had blog posts describing how we use our iPads in geological fieldwork (with examples from the limestones of Estonia to the basalts of Iceland). Today I used my iPad2 during work in … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Keck Mission Accomplished

mpollock August 7, 2011 11:02 pm

WOOSTER, OH – After a month of hard work, the Iceland Keck group parted ways on Saturday. We arrived in Wooster immediately after returning from Iceland and put in a solid week of work in the lab, preparing our samples … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments