Tag Archives: Fossil of the Week

Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A brittle star trace fossil from the Jurassic of Utah

Mark Wilson February 13, 2011 1:24 am

This week we have a trace fossil that looks almost exactly like the animal that made it. A trace fossil is evidence of organism activity recorded in the rock record. The photograph above shows one of my favorite specimens: Asteriacites … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A chewed-up leaf (Upper Cretaceous of Kansas)

Mark Wilson February 6, 2011 1:17 am

This week’s fossil is a departure from our usual set of marine invertebrate animals. Above is a leaf of Viburnum lesquereuxii from the Dakota Formation of Ellsworth County, Kansas. The rocks enclosing it are from the Upper Cretaceous Cenomanian Stage, … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: The Multidisciplinary European Thorny Oyster (Pliocene of Cyprus)

Mark Wilson January 30, 2011 1:56 am

In the summer of 1996, I was a co-director of  a Keck Geology Consortium project on the island of Cyprus. My students and I worked on the hot central plains far from the well known ophiolite complex in the cool … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A most unlikely clam — rudists from the Upper Cretaceous of the Oman Mountains

Mark Wilson January 23, 2011 1:08 am

This week’s fossil was collected on a memorable trip in 2000 to the United Arab Emirates and Oman with my friend Paul Taylor, an invertebrate paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London. We were there to study hard substrate … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A cystoid (Middle Ordovician of northeastern Estonia)

Mark Wilson January 16, 2011 1:26 am

Fossils don’t get much more spherical than Echinosphaerites aurantium, an extinct creature common in the Early and Middle Ordovician of North America and Europe. These are cystoids, a somewhat informal category of filter-feeding, stalked echinoderms that are relatives of the … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A three-branched graptolite (Lower Ordovician of southeastern Australia)

Mark Wilson January 9, 2011 2:22 am

This week I’m correcting a mistake I’ve been making in my paleontology courses for nearly thirty years. Our subject is a graptolite from the teaching collections — a specimen that has been at least cursorily examined by all of my … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: The tabulate coral Aulopora (Devonian of northwestern Ohio)

Mark Wilson January 2, 2011 6:49 pm

We’re going to start 2011 with a new blog feature: Fossil of the Week! My colleagues, of course, are welcome to also start “Mineral of the Week”, “Structural Geologic Feature of the Week”, or “Climate Event of the Week”.  The … Continue reading →

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