Tag Archives: Fossil of the Week

Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Sea urchin bits (Middle Jurassic of southern Israel)

Mark Wilson September 2, 2012 1:48 am

Our fossils this week come from our growing collection of material found in the Matmor Formation (Callovian-Oxfordian) of Makhtesh Gadol, southern Israel. In November I will be giving a talk at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: an enigmatic set of tubes (Middle Jurassic of Poland)

Mark Wilson August 26, 2012 1:51 am

The fossils this week celebrate the appearance of an article in the latest issue of Palaios authored by an international team led by my good friend and colleague Michał Zatoń (University of Silesia, Poland). The fossils are strange polka-dotted tubes … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: a cameloid footprint (Miocene of California)

Mark Wilson August 19, 2012 1:39 am

This fossil is from near my hometown of Barstow, California. It was collected many years ago loose in talus from the Barstow Formation (Barstovian, Miocene). I note this carefully because today collecting such specimens from the Fossil Beds of the … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: a bifoliate bryozoan (Upper Ordovician of Indiana, USA)

Mark Wilson August 12, 2012 1:35 am

The specimen above is a species within the trepostome bryozoan genus Peronopora Nicholson, 1881. I don’t know which species because that would require me to slice it open and examine its microscopic skeletal details. (A reason why trepostome bryozoans are … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: a beautiful phacopid trilobite (Middle Devonian of Ohio, USA)

Mark Wilson August 5, 2012 1:57 am

Trilobites are always favorite fossils, especially big bug-eyed ones like Phacops rana (Green, 1832) shown above. It is, in fact, the state fossil of Pennsylvania after a petition from schoolchildren in 1988. This specimen is from the Middle Devonian of … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: an encrusted plesiosaur vertebra (Jurassic of England)

Mark Wilson July 29, 2012 1:18 am

The weathered bone pictured above sits on my desk as a treasured memento. It is the centrum of a plesiosaur vertebra. I found it in the Faringdon Sponge Gravels (Lower Cretaceous) of Oxfordshire, England, during my first research leave (1985). … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: A stromatoporoid-stromatolite combination (Upper Silurian of Saaremaa Island, Silurian)

Mark Wilson July 22, 2012 1:51 am

There are two common fossil types that begin with “strom” and look roughly alike to the untrained eye. One is the stromatoporoid, which is a calcareous sponge, and the other is the stromatolite, which is a layered structure produced by … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: ribbed brachiopods (Middle Jurassic of Israel)

Mark Wilson July 15, 2012 1:13 am

These delightful brachiopods are from the Matmor Formation (Jurassic, Callovian) of the Negev in southern Israel. They are part of a long-term Wooster project describing and interpreting a diverse paleocommunity. The latest trip to study these fossils was this past … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: fusulinids (Upper Carboniferous of Kansas)

Mark Wilson July 8, 2012 12:24 am

They look like little footballs, at least the American variety of football. Fusulinids (the name indicating the fusiform shape) are about the size and shape of wheat grains. They were marine protists (single-celled eucaryotes) that lived from the late Early … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Wiggly little foraminiferans from the Middle Jurassic of southern England

Mark Wilson July 1, 2012 1:49 am

These shell fragments are of the oyster Praeexogyra hebridica var. elongata, and I picked them up long ago from a remarkable unit made almost entirely of them. It is the Elongata Bed at the base of the Frome Clay (Middle … Continue reading →

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