Tag Archives: fossils

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

mwilson 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

mwilson 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)

mwilson 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)

mwilson 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)

mwilson 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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“The Heathrow Diversion”: Wooster Geologists unexpectedly in New York City

mwilson December 19, 2010 3:24 pm

FLUSHING, QUEENS, NEW YORK–It seemed like such a good plan months ago. My Senior Independent Study student Megan Innis and I worked this summer in the American South with Paul Taylor and Caroline Sogot, as documented in this blog. We … Continue reading →

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The paleontology of hiatus concretions: fossils without sediment

mwilson December 15, 2010 8:16 pm

Way back in 1984, when I was just a green Assistant Professor of Geology, my wife Gloria and I explored a series of Upper Ordovician (about 445 million years old) outcrops in northern Kentucky to plan a paleontology course field … Continue reading →

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Trays of trilobites, buckets of belemnites ….

mwilson November 26, 2010 9:20 am

WOOSTER, OHIO — Last weekend we picked up another load of rocks, minerals and fossils donated by the family of one of our loyal alumni. We will be sorting through them for months getting them ready for displays and our … Continue reading →

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Putting donated fossils to work

mwilson November 5, 2010 10:52 am

WOOSTER, OHIO — Last month we began integrating a large collection of rocks, minerals and fossils into our teaching program in the Department of Geology. These specimens were donated by an Ohio family who lovingly gathered them over decades. They … Continue reading →

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It is not just fossils in a paleontology lab

mwilson November 4, 2010 2:50 pm

WOOSTER, OHIO — To understand ancient life a paleontology student must also know a considerable amount about modern life. In our Invertebrate Paleontology course this means that students study, for example, modern clams to provide a context for the fossil … Continue reading →

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