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Channel: Pliocene – Wooster Geologists
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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A swimming clam from the Pliocene of Cyprus

In the summer of 1996, I was a co-director of a Keck Geology Consortium project in Cyprus. One of my students was Steve Dornbos (’97), now a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. We had...

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: More bryozoan etchings and an African slug...

This is the inside of a modern cockle shell (Dinocardium vanhyningi) found on a beach in Wilmington, North Carolina. Across the surface is a radiating series of pits, each of which was formed under a...

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Pliocene marls white as snow in southern Sicily

SCIACCA, SICILY, ITALY–Our last stop of the day on this International Bryozoology Association pre-conference field trip was to a massive outcrop of foraminiferan-rich marls known as the Trubi. A view...

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Return to the Pliocene at Altavilla Milicia, Sicily

Our last stop of the day on the IBA field trip was to a classic fossil locality on the north coast of Sicily about an hour east of Palermo. These are fine sandstones and marls preserving a diverse...

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Sediments, fossils and vistas at the Capo Milazzo Peninsula, Sicily

CATANIA, SICILY, ITALY–This was the last day of our International Bryozoology Association pre-conference field trip through Sicily. We had an excellent time and covered an extraordinary amount of...

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A crab’s meal from the Pliocene of Cyprus

This week’s fossil was collected on a Keck Geology Consortium expedition to Cyprus in the summer of 1996. My Independent Study student on that adventure was Steve Dornbos (’97), now a professor at the...

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A delicate brachiopod from the Pliocene of Cyprus

These thin-shelled brachiopods were collected in the summer of 1996 on a Keck Geology Consortium project in Cyprus. Strangely enough, they were the first brachiopods I had ever seen in the Cenozoic....

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A gastropod/coral/hermit crab combination from...

These two shells show a lovely symbiosis between shallow marine hermit crabs and encrusting scleractinian corals. I was first introduced to the concept of “pagurized” shells by my friends Paul Taylor...

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A carnivorous snail from the Pliocene of Cyprus

These drab and worn shells from the Pliocene of Cyprus are the remains of deadly little snails still around today. They are from an unknown species of the genus Euthria Gray, 1850. (Sometimes Euthria...

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A colonial scleractinian coral from the...

This week’s fossil is another from the collection made in 1996 on a Keck Geology Consortium expedition to Cyprus with Steve Dornbos as a Wooster student. Steve and I found a spectacular undescribed...

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: An encrusted scallop from the Pliocene of Cyprus

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...

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A worm-like gastropod from the Pliocene of Cyprus

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...

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: Another vermetid gastropod from the Pliocene of...

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...

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A predatory gastropod from the Pliocene of Cyprus

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...

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A turbinid gastropod from the Pliocene of Cyprus

We saw this broken gastropod from the Pliocene of Cyprus in this blog post about two and a half years ago. I recently rediscovered it while sorting specimens and decided to show this intriguing...

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Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Gastropod opercula from the Pliocene of Cyprus

This week’s brief entry (it is short because we’re in the first few days of a new semester at Wooster) is related to last week’s post. Above are two gastropod opercula from the Nicosia Formation...

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A muricid gastropod from the Pliocene of Cyprus

We return to Cyprus for this week’s fossil. This is a broken shell of the predatory muricid Bolinus brandaris (Linnaeus, 1758) found at the Coral Reef exposure of the Nicosia Formation (Pliocene) on...

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A conid gastropod from the Pliocene of Cyprus

Cyprus again for this week’s fossil. This is a nearly complete shell of the predatory snail Conus pelagicus Brocchi 1814 found at the Epsilos exposure of the Nicosia Formation (Pliocene) on the...

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A low-spired, battle-worn trochid gastropod...

This shell looks like a cinnamon roll. It is another product of the 1996 Wooster-Keck expedition to Cyprus with Steve Dornbos (’97) and me. Like the rest of the Cypriot specimens on this blog, it is...

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A fracture-shaped bioerosion trace from the...

This past semester I worked with three colleagues on a massive trace fossil review paper, which we hope meets success in the next month or so. My primary job on the team was to sort out bioerosion...

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