Author Archives: Mark Wilson

It’s a low-light, iPad photo, but at least it shows Wooster geology junior Melissa Torma enjoying a fine meal in the Hotel Ramon of Mitzpe Ramon, deep in the Negev of Israel. We arrived here this afternoon after a 22-hour … Continue reading… Continue reading →

It’s only half a bone, but the above is one of my favorite fossils. This is a vertebra of an ichthyosaur, identifiable by its figure-8 cross-section. It is from the Sundance Formation (Middle-Late Jurassic) of Natrona County, Wyoming … and … Continue reading →

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 fille… Continue reading →

The irony of me appearing for brief moments as a commentator on last night’s episode of Ancient Aliens (“Aliens and Mega-Disasters“) is that I teach a course at Wooster entitled “Nonsense! And Why It’s So Popular“. O… Continue reading →

This striking and unusual brachiopod is Pygites diphyoides (d’Orbigny, 1847) from Hauterivian (Lower Cretaceous) of Cehegin, Murcia, Spain. Wooster acquired it through a recent generous exchange of brachiopods with Mr. Clive Champion in England. … Continue reading →

Yes, that “Recent” in the title was a clue that these are not actually fossils, but the little beauties fit the spirit of our series. This is sand from an unknown island beach in southern Japan. The spotted star-shaped grains … Contin… Continue reading →

In August 2010 I had a fantastic geologic field trip to the tunnels of Geulhemmmerberg, The Netherlands, to see an unusual exposure of the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary. There I collected a fist-sized sample of the famous boundary clay, which is found … Continue reading →

It is pretty obvious what made this excellent trace fossil: an asteroid echinoderm. (The term “asteroid” sounds odd here, but it is the technical term for a typical sea star.) The above is Asteriacites stelliformis Osgood, 1970, from the Ch… Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading →

It is time again to dip into the wonderful world of trace fossils. These are tracks, trails, burrows and other evidence of organism behavior. The specimen above is an example. It is Lockeia James, 1879, from the Dakota Formation (Upper … Continue reading →
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