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- A Tradition Continues: Richmond, Indiana – Paleoecology, Fall 2025
- Muscle scars in tiny conical fossils: A new paper describing the musculature of Devonian tentaculitids from Armenia and what they mean for the biology and evolution of the group
- Possible Linkages Between Climate and Human History in Ohio (the 4.2 yr. ka interval)
- A spotty Middle Ordovician trilobite from Estonia: A new paper describing an ancient parasitic infection
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Tag Archives: Fossil of the Week
Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A mastodon tusk (Late Pleistocene of Holmes County, Ohio)
This long and weathered tusk sits in a display case outside my office. It is from the American Mastodon (Mammut americanum) and was found many decades ago in Holmes County, just south of Wooster. A tooth found with it was … Continue reading
Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: a long and skinny bryozoan (Upper Cretaceous of Wyoming and South Dakota, USA)
Please say hello to Pierrella larsoni Wilson & Taylor 2012 — a new genus and species of ctenostome bryozoan from the Upper Cretaceous (Campanian-Maastrichtian) Pierre Shale of Wyoming and South Dakota. I imagine it as a graceful little thing spreading … Continue reading
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Tagged Cretaceous, Fossil of the Week, fossils, South Dakota, Wyoming
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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: dinosaur gastroliths (Jurassic of Utah, USA)
These rounded stones are labeled in our collections as gastroliths (literally “stomach stones”) from Starr Springs near Hanksville, Wayne County, Utah. I’m featuring them this week in honor of our Utah Project team working right now in the baking Black … Continue reading
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Tagged dinosaurs, Fossil of the Week, fossils, ichnology, Jurassic, Utah
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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: a very large clam (Upper Cretaceous of South Dakota, USA)
Our version above of the bivalve Inoceramus is actually rather small compared to how big it can get. The record holder is a specimen 187 centimeters in diameter (over six feet) in the Geological Museum of Copenhagen. This Wooster Inoceramus … Continue reading
Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: a trilobite burrow (Upper Ordovician of Ohio)
This is one of my favorite trace fossils. Rusophycus pudicum Hall, 1852, is its formal name. It was made by a trilobite digging down into the seafloor sediment back during the Ordovician Period in what is now southern Ohio. It … Continue reading
Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Corkscrew shells from the Pliocene of Cyprus
Steve Dornbos (’97), now a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and I found these intricate shells by the hundreds in the Nicosia Formation (Pliocene) of Cyprus during his Independent Study field work. (We published this study in 1999.) They … Continue reading
Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Intricate networks of tiny holes (clionaid sponge borings)
The most effective agents of marine bioerosion today are among the simplest of animals: clionaid sponges. The traces they make in carbonate substrates are spherical chambers connected by short tunnels, as shown above in a modern example excavated in an … Continue reading
Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A giant oyster (Eocene of Texas)
It’s no ordinary oyster, of course, because it comes from Texas. It certainly is the largest oyster I’ve ever seen. Wooster received it as part of a large donation in 2010. (You can see students studying it in this previous … Continue reading
Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: the classic bioclaustration (Upper Ordovician of Ohio)
We’re looking at two fossils above. One is the bryozoan Peronopora, the major skeletal structure. The second is the odd series of scalloped holes in its surface. These are a trace fossil called Catellocaula vallata Palmer and Wilson 1988. They … Continue reading
Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: a nestling bivalve (Pleistocene of The Bahamas)
This weathered and encrusted shell was pulled from a round hole bored in a Pleistocene reef (about 125,000 years old) exposed on San Salvador Island, The Bahamas. It is Coralliophaga coralliophaga (Gmelin 1791), a derived venerid bivalve (a type of … Continue reading
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Tagged Fossil of the Week, fossils, ichnology, Pleistocene, The Bahamas
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