Tag Archives: fossils

Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A very thin coral from the Upper Ordovician of Indiana

mwilson February 3, 2013 1:50 am

What we have above is a heliolitid coral known as Protaraea richmondensis Foerste, 1909. It has completely encrusted a gastropod shell with its thin corallum. Stephanie Jarvis, a Wooster student at the time and now a graduate student at Southern … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A twisty trace fossil (Lower Carboniferous of northern Kentucky)

mwilson January 27, 2013 1:58 am

My Invertebrate Paleontology students know this as Specimen #8 in the trace fossil exercises section: “the big swirly thing”. It is a representative of the ichnogenus Zoophycos Massalongo, 1855. This trace is well known to paleontologists and sedimentologists alike — … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A glass sponge from the Upper Ordovician of southern Ohio

mwilson January 13, 2013 1:47 am

Like all those who teach, I learn plenty from my students, sometimes with a simple question. Richa Ekka (’13) asked me last semester during a paleontology lab if the above specimen was really a trace fossil as I had labeled … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A conulariid from the Upper Ordovician of Indiana

mwilson January 6, 2013 1:03 am

This week’s fossil is not technically impressive: it is a rather modestly preserved conulariid from the Waynesville Formation of southern Indiana (location C/W-111). It is notable because it is one of the very few conulariids I’ve found in the Ordovician, … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Episkeletozoans from the Middle Jurassic of Israel

mwilson December 30, 2012 1:55 am

Last week I had a delightful research afternoon with my former student Lisa Park Boush, now a professor in the Department of Geology and Environmental Science at The University of Akron, and currently Program Director, National Science Foundation, Sedimentary Geology … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A swimming clam from the Pliocene of Cyprus

mwilson December 23, 2012 1:20 am

In the summer of 1996, I was a co-director of a Keck Geology Consortium project in Cyprus. One of my students was Steve Dornbos (’97), now a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. We had a great time exploring the Nicosia … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A bivalve boring from the Upper Ordovician of southern Ohio

mwilson December 16, 2012 1:35 am

This week’s fossil is from close to home. In fact, it sit in my office. The above is a trace fossil named Petroxestes pera. It was produced on a carbonate hardground by a mytilacean bivalve known as Modiolopsis (shown below). … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A horn coral from the Upper Ordovician of Indiana

mwilson December 9, 2012 1:34 am

This week’s fossil is a very common one from the Whitewater Formation (Richmondian, Upper Ordovician) exposed near Richmond, Indiana. It was collected, along with hundreds of other specimens, during one of many Invertebrate Paleontology field trips to an outcrop along … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Shark teeth! (Upper Cretaceous of Israel)

mwilson December 2, 2012 1:37 am

This week’s set of exquisite fossils is presented in honor of Andrew Retzler (’11) who has just had his Senior Independent Study thesis at Wooster published in the journal Cretaceous Research: “Chondrichthyans from the Menuha Formation (Late Cretaceous: Santonian–Early Campanian) … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A gumdrop bryozoan (Middle Ordovician of eastern Iowa)

mwilson November 25, 2012 1:03 am

This simple, rounded fossil with tiny holes on its surface is the trepostome bryozoan Prasopora falesi (James, 1884) from the Middle Ordovician Galena Group of eastern Iowa. It was collected with dozens of others on an Independent Study field trip … Continue reading →

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