Category Archives: Uncategorized

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 →

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

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 →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

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 →

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments

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 →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

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 →

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

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 →

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

Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Revisiting a pair of hyoliths from the Middle Ordovician of Estonia

Mark Wilson January 20, 2017 12:01 am

We met these modest internal molds of the mysterious hyoliths about five years ago. With a dramatic new development in hyolith studies, they are worth seeing again. These fossils are internal molds (the sediment that filled the shell) of of … Continue reading →

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

Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: New review paper on architectural design of trace fossils

Mark Wilson January 13, 2017 12:01 am

Last year my friend Luis Buatois led a massive project to review essentially all trace fossil invertebrate ichnogenera (523!) to place them in a series architectural design categories (79). This is a new way to assess patterns of ichnodisparity (variability … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Upper Ordovician brachiopods and bryozoans from paleontology class collections

Mark Wilson January 6, 2017 12:01 am

Last semester the Invertebrate Paleontology class at Wooster had its annual field trip into the Upper Ordovician of southern Ohio. We had a great, if a bit muddy, time collecting fossils for each student’s semester-long project preparing, identifying, and interpreting … Continue reading →

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

Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Geological Magic Lantern Slides from the 19th Century (Part III)

Mark Wilson December 16, 2016 12:01 am

[Note: Wooster’s Fossil of the Week is on holiday until January 2017.] This is the last post illustrating the 19th Century Magic Lantern Slides recently found in Scovel Hall of Wooster’s Geology Department. Please see the December 2 post and … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 12 Comments