ScotBlogs

If all goes to plan, today I leave for the Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America, held this year in Seattle, Washington. To mark the occasion, this week’s fossil is from a poster Macy Conrad (’18), Paul Taylor … Continue reading →

This year Caroline Buttler (Department of Natural Sciences, Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales) and I had a great project describing a cave-dwelling fauna in the Upper Ordovician of northern Kentucky. We hope that work will appear soon in the … Continue reading →

I moved to Wooster at the very end of July.  Since that time, I’ve heard a frequent refrain that “it’s been a dry summer”.  Being a climate scientist, and knowing that everyone (including me) likes to complain about the weather, I … Continue reading →

  LONDON TIMES Victoria and Albert Museum, Medieval Collection Except for, perhaps, the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey, one rarely thinks of London as a place that reflects its medieval roots, the way that Paris, for example, does in … Continue reading →

As a kid, I devoured the pages of Popular Science magazine and was fascinated by the quest for human-powered flight: Was a flying bicycle possible? In the mid 1970s, I read that aerospace engineer Paul MacCready had assembled a team … Continue reading →

Yes, we’ve had a run of French Cretaceous fossils here. This is because we’re in the midst of a major project stemming from summer fieldwork in the Type Campanian of southwestern France. The fossils are delicious, and they are before … Continue reading →

It was a pleasure to pull this massive specimen out of the cabinets, where it had been sitting for more than 20 years. It is a small reef of the oyster Liostrea strigilecula (White, 1877) from the Carmel Formation (Middle Jurassic) … Continue reading →

Interior walls are being framed as the exterior brick and stonework continues. 

One hole in a shell is unremarkable. Several in a repeating pattern is a story. Above is a right valve (exterior) of the oyster Pycnodonte vesicularis from the Campanian (Upper Cretaceous) of southwestern France. It was collected during our fantastic … Continue reading →

Windy, warm, and dry is a good recipe for wildfires, and that has been the norm for Montana this year.  For example, from June 1 through September 4, Missoula received 2.07 inches of precipitation, less than half its average rainfall … Continue reading →