Category Archives: Uncategorized

Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: Encrusting craniid brachiopods (Upper Ordovician of southeastern Indiana)

Mark Wilson March 10, 2017 12:01 am

The two irregular patches above are brachiopods known as Petrocrania scabiosa encrusting the ventral valve of yet another brachiopod (Rafinesquina). That species name “scabiosa” is evocative if not a little unpleasant — it is also the root of the English … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: Mysterious tentaculitids (Devonian of Maryland)

Mark Wilson March 3, 2017 12:03 am

The sharp little conical fossils above are common Paleozoic fossils, especially in the Devonian. They are tentaculitids now most commonly placed in the Class Tentaculitoidea Ljashenko 1957. Tentaculitids appeared in the Ordovician and disappeared sometime around the end of the … Continue reading →

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Dr. Rob Thieler delivers the 36th annual Richard G. Osgood, Jr., Memorial Lecture at Wooster

Mark Wilson March 2, 2017 11:21 am

One of the pleasures of being in the Geology Department at The College of Wooster is that we have the annual Richard G. Osgood, Jr., Memorial Lecture series. These presentations, given in honor of the late Professor Osgood, have significantly … Continue reading →

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Professors Greg Wiles and Meagen Pollock earn a field experience grant from the Keck Geology Consortium

Mark Wilson February 26, 2017 3:33 pm

Wooster, Ohio — Two Wooster Geology Professors, Meagen Pollock and Greg Wiles, have a exciting new grant from the Keck Geology Consortium to fund a five-week research program for first-year and sophomore students interested in the Earth Sciences. The experience … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A scaphitid ammonite (Late Cretaceous of Mississippi)

Mark Wilson February 24, 2017 12:01 am

The beauty above is Discoscaphites iris (Conrad, 1858) from the Owl Creek Formation of Ripley, Mississippi. Megan Innis and I collected it during our expedition to the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary in the southern United States last summer. It is a significant … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A stromatoporoid (Middle Devonian of central Ohio)

Mark Wilson February 17, 2017 12:01 am

Stromatoporoids are very common fossils in the Silurian and Devonian of Ohio and Indiana, especially in carbonate rocks like the Columbus Limestone (from which the above specimen was collected). Wooster geologists encountered them frequently on our Estonia expeditions in the … Continue reading →

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Coring the Bog – An 18,000 Year Record of Environmental Change

gwiles February 13, 2017 10:03 am

Two class projects kick off the Climate Change 2017 course. The first deals with tree-ring dating (dendrochronology, blog post coming soon) of historical structures and then analyzing the tree-rings for their climate significance. The second is is shown below and it concerned with … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A receptaculitid (Middle Ordovician of Missouri)

Mark Wilson February 10, 2017 12:02 am

This week’s fossil is a long-standing paleontological mystery. Above is a receptaculitid from the Kimmswick Limestone (Middle Ordovician) near Ozora, Missouri. I think I found it on a field trip with Frank Koucky in the distant mists of my student … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Peanut worms from the Silurian of Illinois

Mark Wilson February 3, 2017 12:01 am

This week’s fossils are a set of cool sipunculan worms from the Lockport Shale Member of the Racine Formation (Wenlockian, Silurian) of Blue Island, Illinois (which, it turns out, is not an island.). This is Lecthaylus gregarius Weller, 1925. (There … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: Ammonite septa from the Upper Cretaceous of South Dakota

Mark Wilson January 27, 2017 12:01 am

This week we have an ammonite from the Pierre Shale (Upper Cretaceous, Campanian-Maastrichtian) of southwestern South Dakota. It was collected on a wonderful field expedition in June 2008 with my friend Paul Taylor (The Natural History Museum, London) and my … Continue reading →

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