Tag Archives: Silurian

Final day in the Silurian of New York

LOCKPORT, NEW YORK (August 9, 2015) — This was the last day in the field for Andrej Ernst and me. We met all our goals (collecting bryozoans from the Rochester Shale, finding sclerobionts anywhere, and learning more about New York … Continue reading

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Return to the Silurian of New York

LOCKPORT, NEW YORK (August 8, 2015) — Andrej and I began some deep collecting of Silurian localities in the Lockport area today in our survey of the bryozoan and sclerobiont faunas. The sites are, shall we say, not the most … Continue reading

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Into the Niagara Gorge

LOCKPORT, NEW YORK (August 6, 2015) — It holds one of the strongest river currents in the world, the gorge of the Niagara River below Niagara Falls. That tremendous flow has cut a deep canyon through the Silurian rocks of … Continue reading

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Wooster Geologist in New York

LOCKPORT, NEW YORK (August 5, 2015) — What looks like an ordinary commercial quarry above is actually quite unusual. It is an excavation done entirely by amateur paleontologists (“citizen scientists”) to collect and preserve fossils from the Rochester Shale (Upper … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: A Silurian encrinite from southwestern Ohio

The above rock was collected on our Sedimentology & Stratigraphy class field trip last month. It is an average piece of weathered Brassfield Formation (Early Silurian, Llandovery) from Oakes Quarry Park near Fairborn, Ohio (N 39.81472°, W 83.99471°). It is … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A ptilodictyine bryozoan from the Silurian of Ohio

The fossil above was found by Luke Kosowatz (’17) on our Sedimentology & Stratigraphy class field trip last month. We were measuring and sampling the Brassfield Formation (Early Silurian, Llandovery) near Fairborn, Ohio, and Luke pulled this beauty out of … Continue reading

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A beautiful day for Wooster Geologists in the Silurian of Ohio

FAIRBORN, OHIO–It’s field trip season at last for the Wooster Geologists. Several geology classes have now been out in Ohio, taking advantage of windows of spectacular weather. Today was one of those days for 25 students in the Sedimentology & … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A new crinoid genus from the Silurian of Estonia

It is my pleasure to introduce a new Silurian crinoid genus and species: Velocrinus coniculus Ausich, Wilson & Vinn, 2015. The image above is a CD-interray lateral view of the calyx (or head), with the small anal plate in the … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A stromatoporoid from the Silurian of Estonia

Stromatoporoids are extinct sponges that formed thick, laminated skeletons of calcite. They can be very common in Silurian and Devonian carbonate units, sometimes forming extensive reefs. The stromatoporoid above is Densastroma pexisum (Yavorsky, 1929) collected from the Mustjala Member of … Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: The mysterious Paleozoic encrusters Ascodictyon and Allonema

  The above pair of fossils are small sclerobionts commonly found on hard substrates in shallow marine sediments through much of the Paleozoic, especially the Silurian and Devonian. Paul Taylor and I have been studying them for a few years … Continue reading

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