Tag Archives: Negev

Cobbling together a Late Cretaceous story

Mark Wilson May 27, 2011 10:08 am

MITZPE RAMON, ISRAEL–This morning Will and I finished our work with the Zihor/Menuha boundary cobbles. We drove to the southern side of Makhtesh Ramon (pictured above) to see the same units we examined 25 kilometers to the north in Wadi … Continue reading →

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Makhteshim Country: A Future UNESCO Geopark?

Mark Wilson May 26, 2011 2:30 pm

MITZPE RAMON–Our colleague Yoav Avni of the Geological Survey of Israel is part of a movement to declare the Negev Desert around the three major makhteshim a Geopark cataloged by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). A … Continue reading →

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Camel stand-off!

Mark Wilson May 26, 2011 7:28 am

MITZPE RAMON, ISRAEL–It wouldn’t be the Middle East without a camel encounter or two. One year a camel literally ate my lunch when I left it in the shade of the car during a long morning’s work. (He even ate … Continue reading →

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Crinoid success

Mark Wilson May 25, 2011 11:50 am

MITZPE RAMON, ISRAEL–One of our missions on this expedition to Israel is to find more and better examples of a distinctive crinoid in the Middle Jurassic Matmor Formation. Crinoids are stemmed echinoderms with a very long geological history, dating back … Continue reading →

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Makhtesh Gadol: The Movie

Mark Wilson May 24, 2011 3:26 pm

MITZPE RAMON–It will not win awards, but I think you’ll get some of the thrill of driving into Makhtesh Gadol in southern Israel from the northwest. Note the one lane road that goes, alas, two ways.

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First field day: Makhtesh Gadol (A large bowl of geological delights)

Mark Wilson May 23, 2011 2:18 pm

MITZPE RAMON, ISRAEL–Today Will Cary, Yoav Avni (our friend from the Geological Survey of Israel) and I worked in the northern end of Makhtesh Gadol (“the large crater”). This geomorphic feature looks a bit like an oblong impact crater, but … Continue reading →

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Our base of geological operations: Mitzpe Ramon, Israel

Mark Wilson May 22, 2011 1:19 pm

We have written many times about the geology of southern Israel in our blog posts over the past two years, and there is plenty more to come this week. We haven’t discussed the little town we stay in during our … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A scleractinian coral (Middle Jurassic of Israel)

Mark Wilson May 15, 2011 1:20 am

In advance of my next field trip to Israel (watch this space!), our highlighted fossil this week is the scleractinian coral Microsolena, a genus named by the French naturalist Jean Vincent Félix Lamouroux in 1821. The specimen above was collected … Continue reading →

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Thoroughly bored at GSA: A Wooster Geologist Faculty Talk

Mark Wilson October 31, 2010 5:12 pm

DENVER, COLORADO — How I very much enjoy those few minutes AFTER giving a presentation, especially a Geological Society of America talk. That sense of renewed life, the rush of completing a task which was months in preparation, and the … Continue reading →

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New polychaete tubeworm fauna from the Jurassic of Israel

Mark Wilson September 21, 2010 9:20 pm

WOOSTER, OHIO–That may not be the most exciting title I could choose, but it was a fun project nonetheless. My Estonian colleague Olev Vinn and I have a paper in the latest issue of  Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie … Continue reading →

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