Category Archives: Uncategorized

A Twist on our Final Exam: The GIS Poster Symposium

WOOSTER, OH — GEOL 220 (Introduction to GIS) had their final exam this morning, but it was not a typical final exam atmosphere.  It was a very social event, with much mingling and chatter (in between bites of donut holes … Continue reading

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Highlights from the 2013 AGU Fall Meeting

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – The Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union is once again taking place the festive city of San Francisco. Mild weather and sunny skies have greeted the 22,000+ geoscientists who have traveled from across the globe … Continue reading

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

  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

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

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

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

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)

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

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

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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