Author Archives: Mark Wilson

KURESSAARE, ESTONIA–It is always a joy to begin the fieldwork for an Independent Study project — or at least know what the fieldwork will be. This morning we visited the Soeginina Cliff locality on the Atla Peninsula of western Saaremaa &#8… Continue reading →

This week’s fossils are by no means rare — last year Megan Innis and I picked up dozens of them at a muddy outcrop near Starkville, Mississippi, on our Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary expedition (click “Alabama” and “Mississ… Continue reading →

KURESSAARE, ESTONIA–Yesterday afternoon three Wooster geologists met in the Tallinn, Estonia, airport within an hour after flying from three different countries. (Thank you, travel agent Suzanne Easterling!) We rented a car and then drove through… Continue reading →

KURESSAARE, ESTONIA–Yesterday afternoon three Wooster geologists met in the Tallinn, Estonia, airport within an hour after flying from three different countries. (Thank you, travel agent Suzanne Easterling!) We rented a car and then drove through… Continue reading →

SOSNOWIEC, POLAND–A most memorable day traveling through part of the Polish Jura with Michał Zatoń and his delightful family of his wife Aneta and son Tomasz (4 and a half years old). The Polish Jura, also known as the Kraków-Częstochowa &#82… Continue reading →

SOSNOWIEC, POLAND–It could not have been a better day for field work: warm with a light, cooling breeze and plenty of leafy green shade. Our team consisted of me and three Polish scientists: Michał Zatoń and Wojciech Krawczyński (I work &#8230… Continue reading →

SOSNOWIEC, POLAND–A day in the lab with my colleague Michał Zatoń at the University of Silesia. We sorted through two very different paleontological problems with a microscope and a lot of hand waving. The first task was to come up … Cont… Continue reading →

SOSNOWIEC, POLAND–I arrived today in Poland to work for a few days with my friend and colleague Michał Zatoń of the University of Silesia. We are going to study together some of of our favorite fossils (microconchids and other sclerobionts) &#8… Continue reading →

For some reason the Fossil of the Week I’ve had the most comments about is the Ordovician honeycomb coral from Indiana. It has an unexpected polygonal symmetry reflected in many other geological materials like desiccation cracks and columnar basa… Continue reading →

This small fossil was completely new to me when I found it during my research trip to the Ordovician of Russia in the Fall of 2009.  A side view is shown on the left of this conical skeleton, and the … Continue reading → Continue reading →