Tag Archives: Fossil of the Week

Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Bivalve borings, bioclaustrations and symbiosis in corals from the Upper Cretaceous (Cenomanian) of southern Israel

The stark black-and-white of these images are a clue that the fossil this week has been described in a paper. Above is the scleractinian coral Aspidiscus cristatus (Lamarck, 1801) from the En Yorqe’am Formation (Cenomanian, Upper Cretaceous) of southern Israel. … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: An early bryozoan on a Middle Ordovician hardground from Utah

Last week I presented eocrinoid holdfasts on carbonate hardgrounds from the Kanosh Formation (Middle Ordovician) in west-central Utah. This week we have a thick and strangely featureless bryozoan from the same hardgrounds. It is very common on these surfaces, forming … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Eocrinoid holdfasts on a Middle Ordovician hardground from Utah

Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, several students and I did fieldwork in the Middle Ordovician Kanosh Formation in west-central Utah. One year we were joined by my friend Tim Palmer of the University of Aberystwyth. Together, Chris … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A crinoid calyx from the Upper Ordovician of southern Ohio

This week’s contribution from the Wooster collections will be short. If all is going well, as this is posted I’m on my way to the Fourth International Palaeontological Congress in Mendoza, Argentina. I hope to have a few posts from … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: A nest of cornulitid tubeworms and friends from the Upper Ordovician of northern Kentucky

This fascinating and complicated little cluster of cornulitid wormtubes was found by my current Independent Study student William Harrison while we were doing fieldwork near Petersburg, Kentucky. (Just down the road from the infamous Creation Museum, ironically.) It was collected … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: The mysterious Paleozoic encrusters Ascodictyon and Allonema

  The above pair of fossils are small sclerobionts commonly found on hard substrates in shallow marine sediments through much of the Paleozoic, especially the Silurian and Devonian. Paul Taylor and I have been studying them for a few years … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: A hardground with rugose corals from the Upper Ordovician of southern Ohio

The above slab is a carbonate hardground from the Liberty Formation (Upper Ordovician) of southern Ohio. Carbonate hardgrounds are cemented seafloors, so we’re actually looking at the hard rocky bottom of an Ordovician sea. I’ve long found the idea of … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Orthid brachiopods from the Middle Devonian of New York

On the first day of the Invertebrate Paleontology course at Wooster, I give all the students a fossil to identify as best they can. Everyone gets the same kind of specimen, and they can use any means to put as … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Remanié fossils in the Lower Cretaceous of south-central England

The last two editions were about a bryozoan and borings from the Faringdon Sponge Gravels (Lower Cretaceous, Upper Aptian) of south-central England. This week we have some Jurassic fossils from the same unit. That sounds a bit daft at first … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Abundant borings in Early Cretaceous cobbles from south-central England

Last week I described a cyclostome bryozoan on the outside of a quartz cobble from the Faringdon Sponge Gravels (Lower Cretaceous, Upper Aptian) of south-central England near the town of Faringdon. This week I’m featuring a variety of heavily-bored calcareous … Continue reading

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