Tag Archives: fossils

Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A nautiloid from the Middle Jurassic of southern Israel

mwilson September 8, 2013 1:53 am

This is the first nautiloid specimen I’ve seen in the Matmor Formation (Middle Jurassic, Callovian) after ten years of collecting in it. Our colleague Yoav Avni (Geological Survey of Israel) picked it up during this summer’s fieldwork. It is a … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A strophomenid brachiopod from the Middle Devonian of Michigan

mwilson September 1, 2013 1:43 am

Every year in the first class session of my Invertebrate Paleontology course I give my students each an unknown fossil. It must be something relatively common so that I can give 20 nearly-identical specimens, and it is ideally of a … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A crab’s meal from the Pliocene of Cyprus

mwilson August 25, 2013 1:51 am

This week’s fossil was collected on a Keck Geology Consortium expedition to Cyprus in the summer of 1996. My Independent Study student on that adventure was Steve Dornbos (’97), now a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee (and a … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: A foraminiferal ooze from the Pleistocene of Italy

mwilson August 18, 2013 1:29 am

On a recent field trip to Sicily, our paleontological party visited outcrops at Cala Sant’Antonino on the western side of the Milazzo Peninsula in the northwestern part of the island. We saw there an Early Pleistocene sedimentary unit informally called … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: An almost planispiral gastropod from the Middle Jurassic of southern Israel

mwilson August 11, 2013 1:56 am

  Add this to the list of fossils that have confused me. This summer, during a Wooster expedition, Lizzie Reinthal and Steph Bosch collected the above specimen from the Matmor Formation (Middle Jurassic, Callovian) of southern Israel. I simply assumed … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: An irregular echinoid from the Middle Jurassic of southern Israel

mwilson August 4, 2013 1:38 am

From the view above, this fossil from the Matmor Formation (Middle Jurassic, Callovian) of southern Israel looks like your standard echinoid (a group that contains sea urchins and sand dollars), but turn it on its side (see below) and you … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: An infected crinoid from the Middle Jurassic of southern Israel

mwilson July 28, 2013 1:00 am

This weathered beauty is a stem fragment of the articulate crinoid Apiocrinites negevensis from the Matmor Formation (Middle Jurassic, Callovian) of the Negev, southern Israel. The regular divisions you see making up the stem are the columnals, which look a … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Dinosaur teeth from the Cretaceous of Morocco

mwilson July 21, 2013 1:36 am

The fossil above is the best of a collection of dinosaur teeth given to us by the generous George Chambers (’79). The species that held it is the gargantuan theropod predator Spinosaurus aegyptiacus Stromer, 1915. The teeth are from Cenomanian … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Dinosaur footprints of unknown provenance

mwilson July 14, 2013 1:00 am

These are the only fossils in the Wooster collection I feel some shame about. They are tridactyl theropod dinosaur footprints. They are not spectacular, but they do the job for classes and visits by schoolchildren. I regret that we have … Continue reading →

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Wooster Geologists in Jerusalem

mwilson July 10, 2013 11:14 pm

MITZPE RAMON, ISRAEL–This is the beautiful 400-year-old Turkish wall surrounding Jerusalem. It and virtually all the buildings in Jerusalem is made of “Jerusalem Stone” (a set of Cretaceous micritic limestones, to be pedantic). When the sun rises or sets on … Continue reading →

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