Tag Archives: Ordovician

Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: a little sclerobiont community (Upper Ordovician of Indiana)

Last week the students of my Invertebrate Paleontology class found many excellent fossils in the Whitewater and Liberty Formations of southeastern Indiana. We will be featuring some of them in this space. I want to start with one of my … Continue reading

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Paleontology field trip in southeastern Indiana

RICHMOND, INDIANA–Geology students in the Cincinnati area are a bit spoiled when it comes to finding fossils in the field. The Upper Ordovician rocks here are world-famous for the extraordinary abundance, variety and preservation of invertebrate fossils.like those shown above … Continue reading

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Upside-down and inside-out: Cryptic skeletobiont communities from the Late Ordovician of Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky — An abstract submitted to the Geological Society of America for the 2012 annual meeting

Editor’s note: The Wooster Geologists in Indiana this summer wrote an abstract for the Geological Society of America Annual Meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, this November. The following is from student guest blogger Kit Price in the format required for … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: a bifoliate bryozoan (Upper Ordovician of Indiana, USA)

The specimen above is a species within the trepostome bryozoan genus Peronopora Nicholson, 1881. I don’t know which species because that would require me to slice it open and examine its microscopic skeletal details. (A reason why trepostome bryozoans are … Continue reading

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Wooster Geologists in Indiana!

WOOSTER, OHIO–I’ve seen a lot of fossils in my blessedly long time as a paleontologist, and I’ve had the opportunity to study them in many exotic places. I’m often reminded, though, that one of the best preserved and most diverse … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: a trilobite burrow (Upper Ordovician of Ohio)

This is one of my favorite trace fossils. Rusophycus pudicum Hall, 1852, is its formal name. It was made by a trilobite digging down into the seafloor sediment back during the Ordovician Period in what is now southern Ohio. It … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: the classic bioclaustration (Upper Ordovician of Ohio)

We’re looking at two fossils above. One is the bryozoan Peronopora, the major skeletal structure. The second is the odd series of scalloped holes in its surface. These are a trace fossil called Catellocaula vallata Palmer and Wilson 1988. They … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: an encrusted nautiloid (Upper Ordovician of Kentucky)

Two fossils this week in our series. The large segmented cone is a bisected nautiloid cephalopod from the Upper Ordovician of northern Kentucky. The original shell (made of the mineral aragonite) has been dissolved away, leaving the sediment that filled … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A mysterious sponge (Late Ordovician of Ohio)

I’ve been collecting and studying fossils from the Upper Ordovician of the Cincinnati region for three decades now, but I’ve never seen another specimen like the one pictured above. An amateur collector, Howard Freeland, generously donated this rock to Wooster … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A cornulitid (Late Ordovician of Indiana)

This may look like just another wormtube on a shell — a recurring theme on this blog — but it is special, of course. This is the common Paleozoic genus Cornulites Schlotheim 1820, specifically Cornulites flexuosus (Hall 1847). It was … Continue reading

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