Tag Archives: fossils

A West Texas outcrop

mwilson November 13, 2009 10:18 pm

BROWNWOOD, TEXAS–It was nearly a five hour drive from College Station, Texas, through the Hill Country to our first Permian exposure in West Texas. (We passed, by the way, through Killeen and Fort Hood.) It was worth the trip for … Continue reading →

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First Wooster talk at the 2009 GSA meeting

mwilson October 19, 2009 12:27 am

PORTLAND, OREGON–By now I’ve given over 35 talks at annual Geological Society of America meetings, but I still get as nervous as I did as a graduate student. The cavernous room, the high quality of the previous presentations, the people … Continue reading →

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First Wooster poster presentation of the 2009 GSA annual meeting

mwilson October 18, 2009 11:20 pm

Elyssa Belding Krivicich (’09) and Sophie Lehman (’08) cheerfully presenting their poster on Jurassic marine paleoecology in Israel at the Geological Society of America meeting in Portland.

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Conservation Paleobiology Short Course

mwilson October 18, 2009 12:43 pm

PORTLAND, OREGON–The Paleontological Society has a free short course program it runs on the day before the GSA meeting officially begins. When I began my career the topics were always about some taxonomic group such as “Brachiopods”, “Mollusks”, “Plants” and … Continue reading →

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A Bit of Vertebrate Paleontology

mwilson September 9, 2009 8:13 am

MAKHTESH RAMON, ISRAEL–On my last day of fieldwork Yoav took me to some wonderfully complex exposures of Cretaceous and Tertiary rocks just north of Makhtesh Ramon. They tell a story of the origins of the Makhtesh anticlinal structure, especially the … Continue reading →

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Wading in the Jurassic Sea

mwilson September 9, 2009 8:07 am
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Jurassic Cryptic Marine Ecosystems

mwilson September 8, 2009 12:03 pm
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Wandering in the Wilderness (Literally)

mwilson September 7, 2009 1:08 pm

MAKHTESH GADOL, ISRAEL–Today I mapped exposures of a particular fossiliferous unit in the Matmor Formation. It meant climbing up and down steep hills bent over the ground scanning for fossils. It is a remarkable skill we humans have for visually … Continue reading →

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Ammonite Identified

mwilson September 6, 2009 1:46 pm

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL–I don’t really think the readers of this blog have been anxiously waiting to hear the taxonomic identification of the ammonite I found in the Matmor Formation last week.  It is worth a note, though, to briefly describe how … Continue reading →

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A Most Unusual Clam from the Triassic of Israel

mwilson September 5, 2009 3:48 pm

MAKHTESH RAMON, ISRAEL–The Triassic was a time of unusual evolutionary innovations.  The Permian extinctions immediately before the Triassic may have wiped out up to 95% of marine animal species, so the survivors had considerable “empty niche space” to fill as … Continue reading →

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