Author Archives: Mark Wilson

About Mark Wilson

Mark Wilson is an emeritus Professor of Geology at The College of Wooster. He specializes in invertebrate paleontology, carbonate sedimentology, and stratigraphy. He also is an expert on pseudoscience, especially creationism.

Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A lucinid bivalve from the Middle Jurassic of southern Israel

Mark Wilson March 5, 2015

Above is a specimen of the lucinid bivalve Fimbria sp. from the Matmor Formation (Middle Jurassic) of Makhtesh Gadol in southern Israel. I collected it in 2007 while working with Meredith Sharpe (Wooster ’08) as she pursued the fieldwork for … Continue reading →
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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: Star-shaped crinoid columnals from the Middle Jurassic of southern Utah

Mark Wilson February 26, 2015

Just a quick Fossil of the Week post. If all has gone well, I’m somewhere in the Mojave Desert on a College of Wooster Spring Break geology field trip. Above we see isolated columnals (stem units) of the crinoid Isocrinus … Continue reading →
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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A molded brachiopod from the Lower Carboniferous of Ohio

Mark Wilson February 20, 2015

We haven’t had a local fossil featured on this blog for awhile. Above is an external mold of the spiriferid brachiopod Syringothyris typa Winchell, 1863, from the Logan Formation (Lower Carboniferous, Osagean, about 345 million years old) of southeastern Wooster, … Continue reading →
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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: Sponge and bivalve borings from the Miocene of Spain

Mark Wilson February 13, 2015

This week we have a rather unimposing limestone cobble, at least from the outside. It was collected way back in 1989 by my student Genga Thavi (“Devi”) Nadaraju (’90) as part of a Keck Geology Consortium field project in southeastern … Continue reading →
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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A Pleistocene octocoral holdfast from Sicily

Mark Wilson February 6, 2015

My Italian colleague Agostina Vertino collected this beautiful specimen from the Pleistocene of Sicily and brought it to Wooster when she visited five years ago. It is the attaching base (holdfast) of the octocoral Keratoisis peloritana (Sequenza 1864). Octocorals (Subclass … Continue reading →
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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A stromatoporoid from the Silurian of Estonia

Mark Wilson January 30, 2015

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 Fossil of the Week: A predatory gastropod from the Pliocene of Cyprus

Mark Wilson January 23, 2015

This week we have another fossil from the Nicosia Formation (Pliocene) of the Mesaoria Plain in central Cyprus. It is again from a Keck Geology Consortium project in 1996 with Steve Dornbos (’97). This time, though, instead of our Coral … Continue reading →
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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: Another vermetid gastropod from the Pliocene of Cyprus

Mark Wilson January 15, 2015

Why another one of those strange twisty gastropods from the Pliocene of Cyprus for our Fossil of the Week? Because this one fooled me for years. Above is a pair of images of a specimen of the vermetid gastropod Petaloconchus … Continue reading →
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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A worm-like gastropod from the Pliocene of Cyprus

Mark Wilson January 9, 2015

This week we continue with fossils from the Nicosia Formation (Pliocene) of the Mesaoria Plain in central Cyprus. These fossils are from a Keck Geology Consortium project in 1996 with Steve Dornbos (’97). Above we have one of the most distinctive … Continue reading →
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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: An encrusted scallop from the Pliocene of Cyprus

Mark Wilson January 2, 2015

One of the very best paleontological sites I had the pleasure of collecting was on the hot Mesaoria Plain near the center of the island of Cyprus. It was the summer of 1996 and Steve Dornbos (’97) and I were … Continue reading →
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