Tag Archives: Fossil of the Week

Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A crinoid-rich Lower Carboniferous siderite concretion (part I)

Last year Wooster emeritus geology professor Sam Root generously donated the above pictured siderite concretion to our paleontology collections. He had received it from a friend who didn’t know where it came from originally so we have no location. The … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: Glyptodon carapace fragment from the Pleistocene

This is a tiny bit of a large and fascinating Pleistocene animal from Central and South America. It is Glyptodon, an impressively large mammal with bony armor much like its cousin the armadillo. The above fossil is a fragment of … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Rugose corals from the Upper Ordovician of Ohio

College of Wooster student Willy Nelson spotted and collected up this beautiful Liberty Formation slab on our 2013 Invertebrate Paleontology course field trip to the Upper Ordovician of the Caesar Creek area in southern Ohio. There are many exquisite fossils … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A trepostome bryozoan from the Upper Ordovician of northern Kentucky

First, what U.S. state does this delicious little bryozoan resemble? It’s so close I can even pick out Green Bay. This is Heterotrypa frondosa (d’Orbigny, 1850), a trepostome bryozoan from the Corryville Formation (Upper Ordovician) in Covington, Kentucky. I collected … 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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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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