Tag Archives: fossils

Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A carrier shell snail (Recent, Pacific Ocean)

OK, it’s true: our Fossil of the Week is not actually a fossil. (The “Recent” in the title was a clue.) I bought this shell at the Wayne County Fair and it was so beautiful it just had to make … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

First Wooster student presentations: The Estonia team

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA–The first Wooster students presented today at the Geological Society of America annual meeting. Above is Nick Fedorchuk who talked about his work in Estonia studying the Wenlock-Ludlow boundary on Saaremaa Island and its implication for Silurian stratigraphy and … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: an aberrant brachiopod (Permian of Texas)

Funny word to apply to a fossil: aberrant, meaning “deviating from the normal”. It’s an old-fashioned word rarely used these days, primarily because we have a hard time defining “normal”. It was the word used when I was introduced to … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: an oreodont (probably from the Oligocene of Nebraska)

Oreodonts are extraordinarily common fossils in the Oligocene of North America. Just about every teaching fossil collection contains at least a couple oreodont skulls, most obtained during late Nineteenth-Century field trips to the Great Plains. Our specimen above is of … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

A Midday Biology & Geology Field Trip

WOOSTER, OHIO–Our colleague Rick Lehtinen in the Department of Biology had a great idea: how about a casual noon trip to the local Spangler Park to enjoy the plants, animals, rocks and streams? So Greg Wiles and I took him … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: a venerid bivalve (Upper Cretaceous of Jordan)

This summer I joined a team describing a shell bed in the Upper Cretaceous (lower Campanian, about 80 million years old) Wadi Umm Ghudran Formation exposed northeast of Amman, Jordan (at N 32° 09.241′, E 36° 12.960′, to be exact). … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Fossils in the Wild: Invertebrate Paleontology Field Trip

CAESAR CREEK LAKE, OHIO–The 2011 Invertebrate Paleontology class had a productive field trip on a beautiful Ohio day. Thunderstorms roamed the state, but we saw them only when we were comfortably on the bus. We worked in the emergency spillway … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A tabulate coral (Middle Devonian of New York)

This week’s specimen is from a group of fossils I gave my Invertebrate Paleontology students as “unknowns” to identify. Since it is their very first week of class I expected them to struggle, but many did remarkably well. (Congratulations to … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A trilobite hypostome (Upper Ordovician of southern Ohio)

We had a familiar trilobite last week, so this week we’ll look at a poorly-known part of a trilobite: the hypostome. Above is an incomplete forked, conterminant hypostome of the large trilobite Isotelus. (Isotelus, by the way, is the state … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A trilobite (Middle Cambrian of Utah)

I’ve avoided having a trilobite as Fossil of the Week because it seems like such a cliché. Everyone knows trilobites, and they are the most common “favorite fossil” (invertebrate, anyway). Plus our best trilobite (seen above) is the most familiar … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment