Wooster Geology Majors Help with B-WISER

The College’s of Wooster’s B-WISER (Buckeye Women In Science, Engineering, and Research) program for 7th and 8th grade girls descended upon Scovel Hall last week for some fun activities in geology. In an afternoon session with the campers, we divided them into several groups so that they could get more individualized attention as they moved from station to station. One station, which was taught by geology major Lindsey Bowman (’12), allowed the campers to look at a variety of minerals and igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks. The focus of the station, though, was a fossil exercise in which campers tried to identify invertebrate fossils from large Ordovician rock slabs that the Mark Wilson has collected over the years. These slabs primarily contained brachiopods, bryozoans, rugose corals, bivalves, and trilobite fragments. In the image below, Lindsey (far left, blue shirt) is helping the campers identify Ordovician fossils.

The other station involved recreating a dinosaur trackway from Texas. The dinosaur tracks, as well as the stride distances between footprints, were to scale. B-WISER campers were tasked with figuring out which dinosaur was moving faster (bipedal or quadrupedal) and then coming up with a hypothesis of dinosaur behavior at the time the trackway was made. With help from William Cary (’13) and myself, campers navigated the measuring and math required to complete the task. Below is an image of the trackway in Scovel Hall; the campers are busy calculating the footprint length and stride length, while William (green shirt) is in the background helping with the activity.

At the end of the afternoon, all B-WISER campers came together for a final activity involving Plate Tectonics. Campers participated in a JIGSAW exercise created by Dale Sawyer (Rice University) in which they are divided into speciality teams: geography, seismology, volcanology, and geochronology. After analyzing data from only their specialty, mixed groups are formed so that there is at least one person from each speciality. Campers then put all of the data sets together to determine the position of the major plate boundaries on Earth. The B-WISER campers appeared to have a great time throughout the week, and geology sure enjoyed their visit!!

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Wooster Geologist in Poland

SOSNOWIEC, POLAND–I arrived today in Poland to work for a few days with my friend and colleague Michał Zatoń of the University of Silesia. We are going to study together some of of our favorite fossils (microconchids and other sclerobionts) and then visit local quarries in the Jurassic. This trip is supported by the Henry Luce Fund for Distinguished Scholarship at Wooster. On Friday I fly on to Estonia where I’m meeting Rachel Matt (’12) and Nick Fedorchuk (’12) for their Independent Study projects in the Silurian carbonates on the islands of Hiiumaa and Saaremaa.

Michał’s department is located in Sosnowiec, a city that is part of the Katowice Metropolitan area. (A view of an older part of Sosnowiec is shown above.) Like all of Poland, this region has a very complicated history. It was an important merchant city because of its location near the borders of the German, Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires. Its main industries were badly damaged in World War I, and it was one of the first places occupied by Nazi Germany at the start of World War II. The heavy hand of 1950s communist architecture (large concrete block buildings) has been somewhat muted by recent renovations.

An industrial part of Sosnowiec.

Michał made certain I had a good traditional Silesian-Polish meal this afternoon. It began with a soup called “zurek” made with potatoes, hard-boiled eggs, mushrooms, tiny cubes of beef, and something that gave it an almost lemony-sour taste. Our main course was “ruskie perogi” filled with potato, white cheese, and fried onions. These apparently come from Red Ruthenia, a region now in Ukraine.

It is going to be a multicultural scientific experience this week!

The very tall Earth Sciences Department building on the campus of the University of Silesia. They take their geology very seriously here.

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A chain coral (Silurian of Ohio)

For some reason the Fossil of the Week I’ve had the most comments about is the Ordovician honeycomb coral from Indiana. It has an unexpected polygonal symmetry reflected in many other geological materials like desiccation cracks and columnar basalt. So this week’s fossil is another coral with a surprising shape: the chain coral Halysites.

Halysites is a tabulate coral genus originally named by Johann Fischer von Waldheim in 1828. Its corallum (colonial skeleton) consists of long vertical tubes (corallites) laterally attached to each other in ranks so that a cross-section looks like a series of chain links. Each corallite held a single coral polyp (an individual) that collected zooplankton for food. The spaces between the ranks — the empty holes — are called lacunae.

A closer view of the halysitid corallum. This specimen is replaced with silica so the surrounding limestone matrix could be removed by dissolving it in hydrochloric acid.

Halysites lived only in the Ordovician and Silurian (about 480 to 420 million years ago), so it is a rough index fossil for these periods. They were especially common in coral reefs, adding stability because their lacunae filled with sediment making them very difficult to dislodge by currents.

Thin-section of a halysitid coral with limestone matrix still in the star-shaped lacunae.

References:

Motus, M.-A. and Klaamann, E. 1999. The halysitid coral genera Halysites and Cystihalysites from Gotland, Sweden. GFF 121: 81-90.

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A strange little echinoderm (Ordovician of Russia)


This small fossil was completely new to me when I found it during my research trip to the Ordovician of Russia in the Fall of 2009.  A side view is shown on the left of this conical skeleton, and the top view is right.  I could tell it was an echinoderm because it has a characteristic structure in its calcitic skeleton known as the stereom (a network of tiny passageways inside the crystals).  Other than that, it was a mystery to me.

My Russian colleague Andrey Dronov showed me that it is of the genus Bolboporites, a strange relative of the crinoid found only in the Ordovician of the Baltic Region and North America.  As you can see in the reconstruction on the right below, it probably lived in the sediment as an upwardly-flaring cone with a single feeding arm (the brachiole) collecting suspended organic matter from passing water for food.  In the fossil view above and right, you can see the hole where the missing brachiole fit; inside of that you can just make out an opening that is likely the mouth.

Bolboporites likely originated on the paleocontinent of Baltica and then migrated to North America.  As far as I can tell it is vanishingly rare over here — I’ve never seen Bolboporites before in the field or in collections.  Now Wooster has one of the very few of these little treasures.

References —

Rozhnov, S.V. 2009. Eocrinoids and paracrinoids of the Baltic Ordovician basin: a biogeographical report. IGCP Meeting, Ordovician palaeogeography and palaeoclimate, Copenhagen, p. 16.

Rozhnov, S.V. and Kushlina, V.B. 1994. Interpretation of new data on Bolboporites Pander, 1830 (Echinodermata; Ordovician), p. 179-180, in David, B., Guille, A., Féral, J.-P. & Roux, M. (eds.), Echinoderms through time (Balkema, Rotterdam).

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Wooster Tree Ring Lab Ready for Business

Guest blogger Jon Theisen

Beginning May 17th and running until June 10th, the College of Wooster Tree Ring Lab has been partnering with and funded by The Center for Entrepreneurship in an effort to demonstrate the viability of dendrochronological dating as a business opportunity.   The professor in charge of the Tree Ring Lab, Greg Wiles, and his employees, Jon Theisen and Anna Mudd, have spent the last four weeks collecting and dating samples gathered from the towns of Worthington and Somerset, Ohio.  The first week of the project consisted of traveling to the towns of Worthington and Somerset, which are approximately two hours south of Wooster.

Greg Wiles and Jon Theisen consulting with Somerset Mayor Tom Johnson in the Ridenour Barn, one of the many structures sampled by the Wooster Tree Ring Lab

On Tuesday, May 17th, members of the Tree Ring Lab traveled to Worthington, Ohio, in order to sample two structures for the Worthington Historical Society.  The first structure was the Old Rectory, which the Tree Ring Lab successfully dated to 1846.  The Old Rectory was built to house the reverends of St. John’s Episcopal Church.

In the afternoon, members of the Tree Ring Lab went to the Orange Johnson House, just a quick drive from the Old Rectory, in order to gather tree ring samples.  The Orange Johnson House was successfully dated to 1811 for the original structure.

The next day, researchers traveled to Somerset, Ohio, to meet with the Mayor, Tom Johnson.  Mayor Johnson had a number of structures that he wanted dated, so the Tree Ring Lab got to work.

The front of the Miller Tavern in Somerset, Ohio.  Although the exterior of the building has been renovated, the interior beams of the building are still original.

The first building the team sampled in Somerset, Ohio, was the Miller Tavern.  The image above is of team member Jon Theisen using a hand auger to retrieve a wooden core sample from a wall beam in Miller Tavern.  The Miller Tavern was successfully calender dated to 1808.

The team spent Thursday, May 19th in the Tree Ring Lab becoming familiar with the equipment and computer programs they would use to date the cores retrieved from the structures we sampled.  Below is an image of what the retrieved cores look like after they have been sanded and mounted.

The retrieved cores are glued into wooden mounts, and then sanded with a belt sander and high grit sandpaper until they are very smooth and the individual rings can be seen under the microscope.  The cores are counted and the total number of years represented by individual rings is written on the side of the mount.  After the initial count is completed, the cores are placed on the Acu-Rite measuring system, and by using a computer program called Measure J2X, the width of the individual tree rings is measured to the nearest 0.001mm.  These measurements are saved to a computer file where they can then be edited.  A computer program called COFECHA is then used to compare the ring width data of cores taken from a single structure against each other to create a “floating” chronology where the cores are relatively dated against one another.

An example of how cores can be dated relative to each other in order to develop a “floating” chronology

Once a “floating” chronology has been developed for a structure, the ring width measurements are compared against a calendar dated master series of measurements that have been previously dated.  By comparing the “floating” chronology against the master series, a calendar date can be assigned to the structure.

After a day in the lab, the team was ready to get back out in the field and continue gathering samples.  Friday, May 20th saw members of the Tree Ring Lab return to Somerset, Ohio, to gather samples from more structures off of Mayor Tom Johnson’s list.  In the morning the team stopped at the Linnabary House, pictured below, to take a sample.  According to the owners, the house was originally used as a church.  The beam was successfully dated to 1823.

In the afternoon, the team collected samples from two structures.  The first building was the historic library of Somerset, which was still in use today.  The team went down to the basement of the library, pictured below, and gathered samples from the joists supporting the floor.  The library was successfully dated to 1818.

After the library, the team traveled into the country and visited the Johnson House, pictured below.  While the building had been damaged by recent storms that downed trees, Tom Johnson is hoping that a date for when the structure was built will help secure funds for rehabilitating the structure.  The Johnson House was calendar dated to 1817.

 

After the first week in the field, the team spent the following three weeks in the Tree Ring Lab sanding, counting, and dating cores.  During this time, Jon Theisen and Anna Mudd created seven reports detailing the findings for each structure, a poster, and a blog post.  The reports consist of the name of the structure, a description of the dating techniques used, the calendar date of the samples, and a graph showing how well the measured samples correlate with the master series they were dated against.

These four weeks have shown members of the Tree Ring Lab that there is a great demand for dendrochronological dating.  Dr. Wiles has continued to receive requests for the Tree Ring Lab to visit sites across Ohio in order to gather samples and provide dates for historic structures.

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Wooster geologists in the heart of American science

ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA–The National Science Foundation (NSF) is a federal agency charged by Congress “to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense…” It had a budget last year of $6.9 billion and is a major source of funding for American scientific research, especially in colleges and universities. NSF is highly respected — and not a little feared — by working scientists. I visited NSF headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, for a meeting with Lisa Park Boush (Wooster ’88) who is a Program Director for Sedimentary Geology and Paleobiology. Although we were not discussing NSF business (we were transferring the Secretary position of The Paleontological Society from her to me), I learned a lot about the agency from Lisa. NSF officials work very hard, for one, and they are very concerned about the scientific communities they serve.

The impressive front of the NSF building in Arlington, Virginia.

Lisa Park Boush in her NSF office (with a coveted window view behind her). Lisa was one of my Independent Study students, so I am especially proud of her accomplishments and responsibilities.

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Wooster Geologist in … a library

WASHINGTON, D.C.–And not just any library — The Library of Congress. I am in the Thomas Jefferson Building, the front of which is shown above. In the heart of the Jefferson complex is the Main Reading Room (see below), where I’m occupying a desk in one of the concentric circles for readers. To get in I had to preregister as a researcher online and then file an application to receive a cool Reader’s Identification Card with my picture on it. I’m also demonstrating a fact about scientific research: for every hour spent in the field or lab, at least ten are required staring at a computer screen.

The Main Reading Room is extraordinary. It is circular with a giant dome above and a balcony level lined above with allegorical Greek female plaster statues 10 feet high symbolizing Religion, Commerce, History, Art, Philosophy, Poetry, Law and Science. Just below is a ring of 16 life-size bronze statues of Famous Men (all men) who led lives of thought and, I suppose, reading. (Unlike in Wooster’s Timken Science Library, Darwin does not make the cut.) It is a very impressive place to be a scholar, although every cough and sneeze echoes mightily through here.

The Main Reading Room in the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress. Photography is not allowed in here, so this image comes from the Library of Congress webpage (http://www.loc.gov/index.html).

The Library of Congress was established in 1800 when the capitol of the United States moved from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. The British burned it in 1814 during that regrettable little War of 1812, but Thomas Jefferson stepped up and presented his personal library to the nation as a replacement. It is now the largest library in the world counting books and shelf space.

I am here to get some writing done. My main mission in Washington this week is to see Lisa Park in the National Science Foundation headquarters (more on that later), but I’m spending a good two days of the visit writing a draft of a manuscript. I need a place to write with an internet connection, few distractions, and a sense of formality. No place is more formal, scholarly or serious than this!

The collections here are primarily for the humanities and social sciences. This is not a problem for me because all the resources I need are electronic and only a few clicks away. Plus I don’t feel lonely here as a scientist because this good man is  looking down on me:

From: http://www.loc.gov/index.html

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: Coated snails! (Middle Jurassic of France)

In 1988 I had my first visit to France, hosted by my English friend Tim Palmer. We explored Bathonian (Middle Jurassic) limestones in Normandy tracking looking at hardgrounds and other hard substrates. Along the way we stopped in a quarry near the pretty little town of Aubry-en-exmes. There we found thousands of cylindrical white stones. Where broken, we could see they contained some sort of fossil in the center. When I got back to Wooster I cut a few open and polished them down to their centers, revealing the gorgeous snail shells seen above. The shells were originally the mineral aragonite now replaced with coarsely-crystalline calcite.

The snail is known as Bactroptyxis trachaea of the extinct Family Nerineidae in the informal group “Lower Heterobranchia” (which is still around). Cross sections of nerineids like this show their most distinctive feature: elaborate chamber walls inside the whorls of the shell (as seen in a close up below). It was once thought that these complicated structures evolved to strengthen the shell against shell-crushing predators, but now the most common view is that they held special digestive glands to enable them to exploit nutrient-poor organics on carbonate substrates (Barker, 1990).

There is another fossil type here as well: the thick, white calcareous coating of the snails. These are oncolites, a precipitate formed by cyanobacteria. The shells rolled around in a current as the bacteria added layer after layer of calcium carbonate, preserving the shells in such fine detail — and by the thousands.

Reference —

Barker, M.J., 1990. The palaeobiology of nerineacean gastropods. Historical Biology 3: 249-264.

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A gecko’s end

MITZPE RAMON, ISRAEL–What is Will examining so intently? There was drama on the outcrop this afternoon. We are used to seeing cute little geckos clinging to the rocks we study. As we skirted the edge of a limestone cliff, Will saw a very long and narrow snake dash after a lizard. We all watched as the lizard dived down the rocks of the cliff, scrambling to the bottom. The snake followed its every move, catching it in a talus pile. The circle of life.

You can see the snake’s coils here and a motionless lizard. Why is he holding so still in such a dangerous place?

Because on closer view we see that the snake has him by the head and has started to slowly swallow him.

This encounter reminds me of the lizard-scorpion battle witnessed by the 2010 Wooster Geologists team in Utah.

This was our last field day in Israel. Tomorrow morning, very early (4:00 a.m.!), we start the long drive north to Tel Aviv and Ben Gurion airport. Then the long flight to Newark and then Cleveland. It has been another wonderful adventure of geology, biology and history.

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Wooster Geologists at the Siege of Lachish (2700 years later)

MITZPE RAMON, ISRAEL–Every time I visit the British Museum in London, I examine the fascinating relief from Nineveh showing The Siege of Lachish. The detail is extraordinary as the story is told in sequence through dozens of panels. It is a brutal tale of conquest and pillage, giving insights into the heart of an empire long since extinct. Today Will and I visited the archaeological site of Lachish on the way back from Jerusalem. Our friend Yoav gave us an excellent tour — and we were the only people there. The main gate and approach road is shown in the image above.

Lachish was a walled city at the boundary between the hill country and the coastal plain. It is mentioned several times in the Bible, most notably when captured by Joshua from the Canaanites (see Joshua 10: 1-32). The famous Siege of Lachish was in 701 BCE when the Assyrian king Sennacherib sought to conquer the tiny nation of Judea (see II Kings 18). Lachish watched over the coastal plain and the main approaches to Jerusalem.

The city wall on the approach to the main gate. Soldiers marching up the road would have their right sides exposed to this wall. Since they typically carried their shields on their left arms, they are here vulnerable to defending archers at the top of the wall.

The Assyrians did not attack Lachish directly by the main gate. They instead built a siege ramp of stones and wood on the weakest corner of the walled city. They wheeled battering rams and towers up this ramp, eventually breaching the wall despite a counter-ramp attempted by the Judean defenders. This is one of the best preserved siege ramps in the ancient Near East.

A view of the inside of the city showing remnants of the commander’s palace at the highest point.

The view from Lachish into the Judean Hills. Hebron is visible at the top of the distant ridge.

An archaeological controversy (or at least it should be one) is this well in or near the city walls of Lachish. Geologists have shown conclusively that it was a failed well — it did not reach the aquifer (Weinberger et al., 2008). The builders of the well may have thought that all they had to do was penetrate down as far as the wells outside the city to hit water, but those wells were in a perched aquifer of alluvium. The Lachish well is in Eocene chalk. The city may have been running out of water when it was besieged.

It was a privilege to visit such an historic site and have the luxury of a personal guided tour by Yoav.

Reference:

Weinberger, R., Sneh, A. and Shalev, E. 2008. Hydrogeological insights in antiquity as indicated by Canaanite and Israelite water systems. Journal of Archaeological Science 35: 035-3042.

 

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