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 Fossils of the Week: Eurypterids (Late Silurian of New York)

Few fossils are more dramatic than the long-extinct eurypterids. Above is one of Wooster’s best fossils: Eurypterus remipes De Kay 1825 from the Bertie Waterlime (Upper Silurian) of New York. (Thanks to Roy Plotnick for help with the identificati… Continue reading

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A Tale of Two Museums: Part 2 — The Creation Museum

This past Saturday Elizabeth Schiltz of the Philosophy Department and I took our First-Year Seminar students on a long drive to the infamous Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. It was a beautiful day and we had a good time, if … Continue rea… Continue reading

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A Tale of Two Museums: Part 1 — The Cleveland Museum of Natural History

Last week I had the marvelous opportunity to visit two very different museums with Wooster Geologists. This is the first of two posts with short vignettes of the memorable sights and sounds. The first museum was the Cleveland Museum of … Continue… Continue reading

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“Whisky Stones” of Vermont: A Wooster Geologist Connection

The following is a guest blog post from Wooster Geology Senior Lindsey Bowman, a native of Londonderry, Vermont: A metamorphic rock composed mainly of talc, soapstone is found all over the world and has unique qualities such as high heat … Contin… Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A new microconchid genus and species (Permian of Texas)

Two years ago I was invited to Texas by Tom Yancey (Texas A&M) to look at some curious wiggly tubular fossils in the Lower Permian (about 280 million years old). They form small reefs a meter or so across and … Continue reading → Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: an orthid brachiopod (Upper Ordovician of Indiana)

This beautiful brachiopod is Vinlandostrophia ponderosa (Foerste, 1909), an orthid brachiopod from the Maysvillian (Upper Ordovician) of southern Indiana. Until recently it had been traditionally known as Platystrophia ponderosa until a critical paper … Continue reading

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Wooster Geologist on the Crampton’s Gap Battlefield in northern Maryland

In September 1862, Union forces under General George B. McClellan pursued General Robert E. Lee‘s Army of Northern Virginia through northwestern Maryland. Lee had invaded Maryland to demoralize the North ahead of the November elections, and to co… Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Belemnites (Jurassic of Wyoming)

This week’s fossils are among the most recognizable. They certainly are popular in my paleontology courses because no one has ever misidentified one. Belemnites (from the Greek belemnon, meaning javelin or dart) were squid-like cephalopods that lived in the Jurassic … Continue reading
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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: a baculitid ammonite (Cretaceous of Wyoming)

This is a specimen I often place on my Invertebrate Paleontology course lab tests. It is the “straight” ammonite Baculites, which is common enough, but the shell and internal walls (septa) have dissolved completely away, leaving this strang… Continue reading

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: an Italian keyhole limpet (Pliocene of Cyprus)

This week’s fossil is a beautiful little gastropod (snail) scientifically known as Diodora italica (Defrance, 1820), and commonly as the Italian Keyhole Limpet. I collected it with Steve Dornbos (’97) during the 1996 Keck Geology Expedition… Continue reading

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