Tag Archives: fossils

Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: a baculitid ammonite (Cretaceous of Wyoming)

mwilson November 13, 2011 1:50 am

This is a specimen I often place on my Invertebrate Paleontology course lab tests. It is the “straight” ammonite Baculites, which is common enough, but the shell and internal walls (septa) have dissolved completely away, leaving this strangely articulated set … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: an Italian keyhole limpet (Pliocene of Cyprus)

mwilson November 6, 2011 1:39 am

This week’s fossil is a beautiful little gastropod (snail) scientifically known as Diodora italica (Defrance, 1820), and commonly as the Italian Keyhole Limpet. I collected it with Steve Dornbos (’97) during the 1996 Keck Geology Expedition to Cyprus, where it … Continue reading →

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Exploring the Silica Formation (Middle Devonian) in Northwestern Ohio

mwilson October 22, 2011 7:25 pm

PAULDING, OHIO–There’s nothing like the stirring rings of 50 geologic hammers in the morning. Today I was a guest of the North Coast Fossil Club and my friend Brian Bade in a quarry exposing the Middle Devonian limestones and shales. … Continue reading →

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How Fossils Saved Civilization: A National Fossil Day Talk

mwilson October 20, 2011 10:02 pm

WOOSTER, OHIO — National Fossil Day has now been in place for two years. Curiously enough, two Wooster alumnae, Erica Clites and Eva Lyon, have been critical organizers and promoters of this great event as Paleontology Interns with the National … Continue reading →

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

mwilson October 16, 2011 12:01 am

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 →

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First Wooster student presentations: The Estonia team

mwilson October 9, 2011 11:07 pm

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 →

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

mwilson October 9, 2011 1:43 am

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 →

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

mwilson October 2, 2011 1:36 am

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 →

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A Midday Biology & Geology Field Trip

mwilson September 28, 2011 4:24 pm

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 →

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

mwilson September 25, 2011 1:39 am

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 →

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