Tag Archives: Fossil of the Week

Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: A trilobite hypostome with an encrusting cyclostome bryozoan (Upper Ordovician of Kentucky)

A quick post this week. Above is a bit of a large isotelid trilobite my students and I found this past spring break on an expedition to the Upper Ordovician (Katian) of northern Kentucky. It was collected at a roadside outcrop … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: A bouquet of barnacles on a pectenid bivalve from the Upper Miocene of Virginia

These beautiful fossils were found in York State Park by Mae Kemsley (’16). It was a surprise gift I found on my doorstep! They are fossil barnacles completely covering the exterior of a valve of the pectenid bivalve Chesapecten middlesexensis … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Belemnites (Jurassic of Wyoming)

This week’s fossils are among the most recognizable. They certainly are popular in my paleontology courses because no one has ever misidentified one. Belemnites (from the Greek belemnon, meaning javelin or dart) were squid-like cephalopods that lived in the Jurassic … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: a medullosalean pteridosperm (Upper Carboniferous of northeastern Ohio)

It is time we had another fossil plant in this series. The above specimen is Neuropteris ovata Hoffmann 1826, a relatively common bit of foliage in the Upper Carboniferous of North America. This is a pteridosperm, more commonly known as … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Sponge and clam borings that revealed an ancient climate event (Upper Pleistocene of The Bahamas)

This week’s fossils celebrate the publication today of a paper in Nature Geoscience that has been 20 years in the making. The title is: “Sea-level oscillations during the Last Interglacial highstand recorded by Bahamas coral”, and the senior author is … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A Biserial Graptolite (Middle Ordovician of Tennessee)

This week’s fossils are graptolites (from the Greek for written rocks) I found many years ago in the Lebanon Limestone near the town of Caney Springs south of Nashville, Tennessee. They are of the genus Amplexograptus and probably belong to … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A Conulariid (Lower Carboniferous of Indiana)

I have some affection for these odd fossils, the conulariids. When I was a student in the Invertebrate Paleontology course taught Dr. Richard Osgood, Jr., I did my research paper on them. I had recently found a specimen in the … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Bivalve escape trace fossils (Devonian and Cretaceous)

It is time again to dip into the wonderful world of trace fossils. These are tracks, trails, burrows and other evidence of organism behavior. The specimen above is an example. It is Lockeia James, 1879, from the Dakota Formation (Upper … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: A slab of Upper Ordovician bivalves from northern Kentucky

Earlier this month, Luke Kosowatz, Matt Shearer and I went on a field trip through the Cincinnati region collecting Upper Ordovician (Katian) bryozoans and examples of bioerosion for their Independent Study projects and other investigations. I picked up the above … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Strophomenid brachiopods from the Upper Ordovician of southern Ohio

Usually I find fossils in the field or lab and then craft a Fossil of the Week entry around them. This time, though, I started with a paper and then searched for fossils to illustrate it. I found this recent … Continue reading

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