Wooster Geologists Alumni Reception at the 2013 Geological Society Annual Meeting in Denver

1385503_699991804083_1509863553_nDENVER, COLORADO–It is a tradition at the annual GSA meeting to have a Wooster Geologists alumni gathering. Here is this evening’s happy crew of current students, faculty and alumni — or at least a snapshot of a continuum of people coming and going. We missed Dr. Greg Wiles, who could not be with us this year. Thirty people were present at some point.

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Team Utah’s first presentation at GSA 2013

Michael102813DENVER, COLORADO–Michael Williams (who chose a particularly impressive shirt and tie today) and Dr. Shelley Judge presented a poster at the Geological Society of America meeting entitled: “Evidence for inflation and deflation in lavas flows west of Miter Crater, Ice Springs Volcanic Field, Black Rock Desert, Utah.” This was the first offering from this year’s Team Utah. Michael proved to be an effective and animated communicator — and possibly the only sophomore presenting at the meeting!

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Geology Independent Study at Wooster highlighted at GSA meeting in Denver

Meagen102813DENVER, COLORADO–This afternoon Dr. Meagen Pollock presented a poster at the Geological Society of America entitled: “The history, current best practices, and future trajectory of the Independent Study (I.S.) program at The College of Wooster“. In this work, co-authored with the other Wooster geology faculty members, Dr. Pollock outlined the structure of I.S. in geology, emphasizing the philosophy behind what we do. It was well attended, from what I saw, and started many interesting conversations about undergraduate research. An advantage of presenting this poster here is that there were several Wooster I.S. students nearby showing their research results.

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Wooster paleontologists present at the Geological Society of America meeting in Denver

Lizzie102813DENVER, COLORADO–Yesterday Oscar Mmari (’14) gave the first presentation from Wooster’s Team Israel 2013 at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Denver. Today our two paleontologists on the team discussed their posters.

Above is Lizzie Reinthal (’14) cheerfully giving her poster entitled: “Taphonomic feedback and facilitated succession in a Middle Jurassic shallow marine crinoid community (Matmor Formation, southern Israel)“. Her work is co-authored with our friend Howie Feldman. Below Steph Bosch (’14) is ready to discuss her work: “First bryozoan fauna described from the Jurassic tropics: Specimens from the Matmor Formation (Middle Jurassic, Upper Callovian) in southern Israel“. Steph’s poster has the famous palaeontologist Paul Taylor as a co-author.

Steph102813It is great fun to see these students make the transition, both intellectually and physically, from the scorched desert floor of the Negev to such a professional setting. The faculty are very proud.

 

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First Wooster geology presentation at the 2013 annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Denver, Colorado

Oscar102713DENVER, COLORADO–It’s that time of year for geologists when we collect at one of two major national meetings. Wooster geologists are always well represented at the Geological Society of America convention, this year held in downtown Denver. Meagen Pollock, Shelley Judge and I are here with nine enthusiastic Wooster students. Some events have already taken place (notably for me the paleontology short course and an epic annual banquet meeting of the Paleontological Society), and we’ve had our first student poster presentation.

Oscar Mmari is shown above with his poster entitled: “Syndepositional faulting, shallowing and intraformational conglomerates in the Mishash Formation (Upper Cretaceous, Campanian) at Wadi Hawarim, southern Israel“. Readers of this blog will remember Oscar’s summer work in the Negev measuring and describing sections. Oscar’s presentation went very well. Every time I stopped by the poster someone was in deep conversation with him.

CCC102813Here’s an early morning view of the Colorado Convention Center in Denver where we’re doing our work and study (and socializing, truth be told). The weather this weekend has been fantastic, but a big change will come tomorrow morning.

More posts will follow!

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Bits of a bamboo coral from the Lower Pleistocene of Sicily

Keratoisis melitensis (Goldfuss, 1826) 585Earlier this summer I participated on a pre-conference field trip of the International Bryozoology Association throughout Sicily. We had an excellent time and saw many wondrous things. At one stop on the western side of the Milazzo Peninsula in the northwestern part of the island we collected fossils from a fascinating foraminiferal ooze deposit known as the “Yellow Calcareous Marls” (Gelasian, Lower Pleistocene). Among the fossils in this unit were the objects pictured above. They looked like finger bones at first, but are actually the internodes (calcitic skeletal elements) of an octocoral known as “bamboo coral“. This particular species is Keratoisis melitensis (Goldfuss, 1826). I’ve never seen this group before in the fossil record. (Note, by the way, that these specimens are encrusted by foraminiferans and octocoral holdfasts. This means they rolled around on the seafloor for an extended period before burial.)
ModernBambooCoralBamboo coral belongs to the octocoral group and is only a distant relative of reef-forming “hard corals” or scleractinians. They are common today in deep seas because they do not need sunlight for photosynthetic symbionts like most hard corals do. They have multiple polyps for feeding, none of which can retract back into the skeleton. That is why the surface of these internodes is so smooth and without the usual corallite holes. Above is a colony of white bamboo coral (Keratoisis flexibilis); image from Wikimedia Commons.
bamboo_coral_585Here we have a dried specimen of Keratoisis from the Florida Straits. You can see the white calcitic internodes of the skeleton separated from each other by the black nodes made of an organic material called gorgonin. This explains why our fossil specimens consist entirely of the isolated internodes — the chitinous parts did not survive fossilization. (Image from NOAA.)

Bamboo corals are long-lived, and it has been recently discovered that they incorporate trace elements in their skeletons as they grow, making them excellent specimens for studying changes in the chemistry and circulation of deep-sea waters. These fossils may thus someday be useful for sorting out the complex changes in the Mediterranean during the Pleistocene.

References:

Langer M. 1989. The holdfast internodes and sclerites of Keratoisis melitensis Goldfuss 1826 Octocorallia in the Pliocene foraminifera marl Trubi of Milazzo Sicily Italy. Palaeontologische Zeitschrift 63: 15-24.

Sinclair, D.J., Williams, B., Allard, G., Ghaleb, B., Fallon, S., Ross, S.W. and Risk, M. 2011. Reproducibility of trace element profiles in a specimen of the deep-water bamboo coral Keratoisis sp. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 75: 5101-5121.

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A carnivorous snail from the Pliocene of Cyprus

Euthria Gray 1850 Pliocene Cyprus_585These drab and worn shells from the Pliocene of Cyprus are the remains of deadly little snails still around today. They are from an unknown species of the genus Euthria Gray, 1850. (Sometimes Euthria is considered a subgenus of Buccinulum.) They are fossil whelks (Family Buccinidae) from the Nicosia Formation coral reef community described in earlier posts and in a paper by Dornbos and Wilson (1999).

Whelks are carnivorous snails of a group formerly known as the neogastropods. They have an incredible underwater sense of smell through an organ known as the osphradium, enabling them to track down prey items such as clams, other snails, and carrion. (Yes, “tracking down” mostly sessile critters does seem to lack a bit in drama.) With their radulae (essentially tooth-bearing ribbons) they can drill through thick shells. Some are known to cause extensive damage in oyster farms. Their characteristic boreholes have been found in shells since the Cretaceous.

Euthria is very widespread today, and contains innumerable species poorly separated from each other by shell morphology. No doubt some later genetic study will show that the genus consists of relatively few species with considerable ecophenotypic variability.
John Edward Gray 1851Euthria was described by the English naturalist John Edward Gray (1800-1875) in 1850. Gray, who eventually became a fellow of the Royal Society, started his zoological career in a classic way: he volunteered to collect insects for the British Museum in London when he was just 15 years old. He joined the Museum officially in 1824 and stayed there for 50 years, publishing hundreds of papers on zoological topics, from reptiles and birds to snails and clams. Oddly enough, for all his scientific fame, he is also recognized as the first postage stamp collector. In 1840 he purchased a group of Penny Black stamps in order to save them as curiosities rather than use them for mailing.

References:

Beets, C. 1987. Notes on Buccinulum (Gastropoda, Buccinidae), a reappraisal. Scripta Geologica 82: 83-100.

Cowper Reed, F.R. 1935. Notes on the Neogene faunas of Cyprus, III: the Pliocene faunas. Annual Magazine of Natural History 10 (95): 489-524.

Cowper Reed, F.R. 1940. Some additional Pliocene fossils from Cyprus. Annual Magazine of Natural History 11 (6): 293-297.

Dornbos, S.Q. and Wilson, M.A. 1999. Paleoecology of a Pliocene coral reef in Cyprus: Recovery of a marine community from the Messinian Salinity Crisis. Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie, Abhandlungen 213: 103-118.

Fraussen, K. 2002. A new Euthria (Gastropoda: Buccinidae) from New Caledonia. Gloria Maris. Tijdschrift uitgegeven door de Belgische Vereniging voor Conchyliologie 41: 70-74.

Petit, R.E. 2012. John Edward Gray (1800–1875): his malacological publications and molluscan taxa. Zootaxa 3214: 1-125.

Zunino, M. and Pavia, G. 2009. Lower to Middle Miocene Mollusc assemblages from the Torino Hills (NW Italy): Synthesis of new data and chronostratigraphical arrangement. Rivista Italiana di Paleontologia e Stratigrafia 115: 349-370.

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A cheilostome bryozoan and serpulid worm bryolith from the Recent of Massachusetts

Cheilostome Serpulid Muffin TopA bryolith is a mobile, unattached mass of bryozoans. Cheilostome bryozoans are especially good at forming bryoliths because of their hardy skeletons and relatively rapid rates of growth. The above specimen is a bryolith collected by my good friend Al Curran in March 2008 from Duck Creek in Cape Cod Bay near Wellfleet, Massachusetts. It is a modern specimen, so not actually a fossil, but I present it here because these objects have a good fossil record. The bottom view of the bryolith is below.
Cheilostome Serpulid Muffin ReverseThe tubes twisting about in this mass are those of polychaete serpulids. These are filter-feeding “tubeworms” common on marine shells, hardgrounds and rocks since the Triassic. We’ve met them many times in this blog. They are frustrating to identify from the tube alone because the soft anatomy (especially the genitalia, if you can imagine them) are needed to sort out most taxa. They tend to live on the undersides and cryptic spaces of hard substrates, which you can see when comparing the top and bottom of the above specimen.
Cheilostome Serpulid Muffin closerWith this closer look (above) we can see the fabric of the bryozoan skeleton (the zoarium). Individual zooecia (the skeletal tubes of the living zooids) are coming into focus. It appears from the intergrown nature of the serpulid tubes and bryozoan that these two groups were living together at the same time.
Cheilostome Serpulid Muffin closer yetIn this even closer view we see a serpulid tube embedded in a matrix of cheilostome zooecia. The apertures of the zooecia are now visible, and a bit of the frontal walls.
Cheilostome Serpulid Muffin closestThis is the closest I could get with our camera equipment. The frontal walls and apertures of the zooecia are easily seen. In life each aperture would have had a little door (an operculum). The frontal walls are a beautiful lattice-work of calcite.

I hesitate to suggest an identification for this cheilostome bryozoan because one of the world’s experts, my English good friend Paul Taylor, reads this blog. Nevertheless, I think these are of the widespread genus Schizoporella. Paul will correct me quickly if I’m wrong!

References:

Kidwell, S.M. and Gyllenhall, E.D. 1998. Symbiosis, competition, and physical disturbance in the growth histories of Pliocene cheilostome bryoliths. Lethaia 31: 221-239.

Klicpera, A., Taylor, P.D. and Westphal, H. 2013. Bryoliths constructed by bryozoans in symbiotic associations with hermit crabs in a tropical heterozoan carbonate system, Golfe d’Arguin, Mauritania. Marine Biodiversity: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12526-013-0173-4 .

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A gastropod/coral/hermit crab combination from the Pliocene of Florida

Septastrea marylandica_585These two shells show a lovely symbiosis between shallow marine hermit crabs and encrusting scleractinian corals. I was first introduced to the concept of “pagurized” shells by my friends Paul Taylor and Sally Walker. They showed me the many ways by which shells that were carried around by hermit crabs display particular evidence of this specific use, from characteristic wear patterns to patterns of encrustation and boring. Further, there are some situations, such as that shown above, where encrusters and hermit crabs have developed a mutually beneficial relationship that may have even been depended upon by the crabs.

What we have here are gastropod (snail) shells that have been completely encrusted by the scleractinian coral Septastrea marylandica (Conrad, 1841). These are found in great abundance in the Pliocene Pinecrest Sand (foraminiferal zone N20) near Fruitville, Sarasota County, Florida. What is most cool is that the corals have completely encrusted these spiraling snail shells and more. If you look carefully at the aperture of the specimen on the left you see the lower surface of the coral with no snail shell. The coral had encrusted the whole shell and continued to grow from the original aperture outward, elongating the twisting tube farther than the snail ever grew. Why (and how) did it do this?

The answer is that the shells were occupied by hermit crabs. The corals extended the aperture of the shell with the crab shuffling about in the opening. The crabs gained the advantage of a shell that essentially grew along with them, meaning they did not have to make the dangerous switch to a larger shell as often. The corals gained by being carried about into diverse microenvironments, extending their feeding possibilities. Nice arrangement, and elegant fossils to show it.
Septastrea closeSeptastrea marylandica (Conrad, 1841) is a scleractinian coral. We’ve seen this order before on this blog, but usually as a recrystallized version of the original aragonitic shell. In these specimens the aragonite is still preserved in excellent detail. Each of the individual “cups” (corallites) above contained a single coral polyp in life. The radiating vertical walls are called septa and are related to the original soft parts of the polyps. The polyps extended tentacles from these corallites into the surrounding seawater. The tentacles were lined (as they are today) with stinging cells called nematocysts for subduing very small items of prey, such as larvae or tiny arthropods. Corals thus represent an ecological group of sessile benthic epifaunal predators. Sessile means stationary, benthic means on the seafloor, and epifaunal means on the surface of the seafloor (that is, not in the substrate itself). Curiously, then, these corals that encrusted shells with hermit crabs in them became in a sense vagrant rather than benthic because they were moved about on the seafloor. You don’t hear about vagrant benthic corals very often!

References:

Allmon, W.D. 1993. Age, environment and mode of deposition of the densely fossiliferous Pinecrest Sand (Pliocene of Florida): Implications for the role of biological productivity in shell bed formation. Palaios 8: 183-201.

Darrell, J.G. and Taylor, P.D. 1989. Scleractinian symbionts of hermit crabs in the Pliocene of Florida. Memoir of the Association of Australasian Palaeontologists 8:115–123.

Laidre, M.E. 2012. Niche construction drives social dependence in hermit crabs. Current Biology 22: R861–R862.

Petuch, E J. 1986. The Pliocene reefs of Miami: Their geomorphological significance in the evolution of the Atlantic coastal ridge, southeastern Florida, USA. Journal of Coastal Research 2: 391-408.

Taylor, P.D. and Schindler, K.S. 2004. A new Eocene species of the hermit-crab symbiont Hippoporidra (Bryozoa) from the Ocala Limestone of Florida. Journal of Paleontology 78: 790-794.

Vermeij , G.J. 2012. Evolution: Remodelling hermit shellters. Current Biology 22: R882-R884. [Really. The title is spelled exactly this way.]

Walker, S.E. 1992. Criteria for recognizing marine hermit crabs in the fossil record using gastropod shells. Journal of Paleontology 66: 535-558.

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A terebratulid brachiopod from the Miocene of Spain

Terebratula maugerii Boni, 1933_585These large brachiopods are of the species Terebratula maugerii Boni, 1933. They were found in Upper Miocene (Tortonian-Messinian) beds near Cordoba, Spain. Wooster acquired them through a generous exchange of brachiopods with Mr. Clive Champion in England.

The specimen on the left is oriented with the dorsal valve upwards. The ventral valve is below and visible at the top of the image. The ventral valve of terebratulids has a rounded opening through which the attaching device, called the pedicle, extended. The specimen on the right is shown with its ventral valve upwards. Since this is the largest valve, you can’t see the dorsal valve below.

I like these specimens because they have that beautiful fold in the center of the shell. This is much more pronounced than in the usual terebratulid brachiopod (it is said to be “strongly plicated“), so students get to see some variety in this large but generally uniform group.

By the Cenozoic, brachiopods are rather rare in fossiliferous deposits. Shelly beds from the Paleocene on are dominated by mollusks, especially bivalves. This large brachiopod, though, is an exception found in the Upper Miocene shellbeds of southern Spain. It is found in meter-thick accumulations, making it for a very short time a significant carbonate component in marine sediments. Terebratula maugerii was most common in the deep subtidal in high-energy deposits. (See Reolid et al., 2012, for details.)
RomanLampFinally, brachiopods are commonly called “lamp shells“, which makes no sense to most modern students. They were given this nickname way back in the 18th century because of their resemblance to Roman oil lamps, such as those figured above in the same orientation as our shells. These were filled with oil through the central hole and a wick was placed in what we now see as the “pedicle opening”. It is an archaic comparison, but it works!

References:

Boni, A. 1933. Fossili miocenici del Monte Vallassa. Bolletino della Società Geologica Italiana 52: 73-156.

García Ramos, D.A. 2006. Nota sobre Terebratulinae del Terciario de Europa y su relación con los representantes neógenos del sureste español. Boletín de la Asociación Cultural Paleontológica Murciana 5: 23-83.

Llompart, C. and Calzada, S. 1982. Braquio ́podos messinienses de la isla de Menorca. Bol R Soc Espanola Hist Nat 80: 185–206.

Reolid, M., García-García, F., Tomasovych, A. and Soria, J.M. 2012. Thick brachiopod shell concentrations from prodelta and siliciclastic ramp in a Tortonian Atlantic–Mediterranean strait (Miocene, Guadix Basin, southern Spain). Facies 58: 549-571.

Toscano-Grande, A., García-Ramos, D., Ruiz-Muñoz, F., González-Regalado, M.L., Abad, M., Civis-Llovera, J., González-Delgado, J.A., Rico-García, A., Martínez-Chacón, M.L., García, E.X. and Pendón-Martín, J.G. 2010. Braquiópodos neógenos del suroeste de la depresión del Guadalquivir (sur de España). Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Geológicas 27: 254-263.

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