Tag Archives: Fossil of the Week

Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: An edrioasteroid (Upper Ordovician of Kentucky)

Mark Wilson July 24, 2011 1:17 am

This week’s fossil appeared previously in this blog when we discussed hiatus concretions and their fossil fauna. It is one of my favorites for both how we found it (see the entry linked above) and the way it introduced me … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: Pelican’s-foot snail (Pliocene of Cyprus)

Mark Wilson July 17, 2011 12:27 am

This week’s fossil was found on the same 1996 Keck Geology Expedition to Cyprus that produced the Thorny Oyster highlighted in January. Stephen Dornbos (’97) was there, but this fossil was not part of the Pliocene coral reef complex he … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: Ancient shrimp burrows (Middle Jurassic of Israel)

Mark Wilson July 10, 2011 1:01 am

This week we have a trace fossil, the burrow Thalassinoides. It is represented by one of my favorite images, reproduced above, showing a very large Thalassinoides suevicus in the Zohar Formation (Middle Jurassic, Callovian) of Makhtesh Qatan in the Negev … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Nummulitid foraminiferans (Eocene of the United Arab Emirates)

Mark Wilson July 3, 2011 6:14 am

The Great Pyramids of Egypt are made primarily of a yellowish limestone. About 40% of that limestone is made of the fossil type pictured above. These are foraminiferans (single-celled organisms with shells) that lived by the countless billions during the … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Tiny little oysters (Lower Paleocene of Mississippi)

Mark Wilson June 26, 2011 1:45 am

This week’s fossils are by no means rare — last year Megan Innis and I picked up dozens of them at a muddy outcrop near Starkville, Mississippi, on our Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary expedition (click “Alabama” and “Mississippi” in the tags to … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A chain coral (Silurian of Ohio)

Mark Wilson June 19, 2011 1:58 am

For some reason the Fossil of the Week I’ve had the most comments about is the Ordovician honeycomb coral from Indiana. It has an unexpected polygonal symmetry reflected in many other geological materials like desiccation cracks and columnar basalt. So … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A strange little echinoderm (Ordovician of Russia)

Mark Wilson June 12, 2011 1:44 am

This small fossil was completely new to me when I found it during my research trip to the Ordovician of Russia in the Fall of 2009.  A side view is shown on the left of this conical skeleton, and the … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: Coated snails! (Middle Jurassic of France)

Mark Wilson June 5, 2011 1:02 am

In 1988 I had my first visit to France, hosted by my English friend Tim Palmer. We explored Bathonian (Middle Jurassic) limestones in Normandy tracking looking at hardgrounds and other hard substrates. Along the way we stopped in a quarry … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A scleractinian coral (Middle Jurassic of Israel)

Mark Wilson May 15, 2011 1:20 am

In advance of my next field trip to Israel (watch this space!), our highlighted fossil this week is the scleractinian coral Microsolena, a genus named by the French naturalist Jean Vincent Félix Lamouroux in 1821. The specimen above was collected … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s “Fossil” of the Week: The most famous pseudofossil ever (Proterozoic of Canada)

Mark Wilson May 8, 2011 1:51 am

This week’s specimen is a piece of obscure paleontological history, although it represents a “fossil” that was for a short time one of the most prominent in the world. In 1864, the uber-geologist Charles Lyell claimed it was “one of … Continue reading →

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