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Wooster Geologists in Bristol, England 

Bristol, England — Cassidy Jester (’17) and I are spending the weekend in Bristol after finishing our fieldwork in Dorset this week. Our travel and lodging arrangements required a couple of days here before we go to London on Monday and then our separate ways. We’ll continue to sort out our specimens, work on a

Final Days 

On our last days in New Mexico, we hit another couple of promising basins, with little luck. Most of what we found was alive… So we collected all the materials we could from our surface permits, took in the beautiful views, and packed up and headed north to prospect the Crevasse Canyon Formation before heading … Continue reading Final Days

Feeling Washed Up? Consider the State of the Ocean on World Oceans Day 

Recently I’ve been to the beach. I went down to visit an old friend, the USS Lexington. I had stayed aboard her back when I was in 9th grade, about a couple of decades ago, and hadn’t seen her since. … Continue reading

Exploring the Martin formation of Arizona 

Back in March I took a couple of days off ahead of a week of corporate meetings in Tucson, AZ to do some exploring in the Grand Canyon state. Besides visiting the typical tourist destinations, Grand Canyon, Petrified Forest, Meteor Crater, etc., I got in a little fossil collecting. One of the spots I visited was just south of the Mogollan Rim in the Tonto National Forest near Payson, AZ. The hills north of Payson expose paleozoic rocks from the Cambrian through the Permian. My target was [...]

Explore Movie Monsters this Summer with All-New Special FX Camp 

When I was a kid, I lived a couple of years in Singapore. There, at the time, the media was somewhat censored, so your TV viewing options on a Saturday afternoon were limited. Consequently, I have seen the 1981 film … Continue reading

Macraster sp. echinoid from the Duck Creek formation of Texas 

Not only does the Duck Creek formation have ammonites, it has some echinoids as well. I found a couple of nicely inflated specimens of the irregular echinoid Macraster. I sent pictures of my find to a friend in Texas, who is familiar with the Duck Creek formation, and he said they could be either M. elegans or M. washitae. Macraster has a suboval shaped test with a sub rectangular cross section. The adapical surface has the typical five arm imprint of the ambulacra which is where the feet of [...]

Mortoniceras sp. ammonite from the Duck Creek formation of Texas 

Before I started on my adventure in Oklahoma I landed in Dallas and drove north to a site that a good friend had suggested I visit. It was a creek that exposed the Duck Creek formation (Cretaceous, Albian stage) in a couple of spots. Having never collected in Texas before, but seeing plenty of field reports from those who had, I knew the Duck Creek formation should produce some nice fossils. I was not wrong. I found four specimens of the ammonite Mortoniceras sp. washed out in the creek bed. [...]

Consensus, Cooperation, and Conversation 

This is one of my periodic mea culpas for a lack of posts. In this case, I have an excuse and I think it's a worthy one. I'm one of a group of people editing a new book on collection storage, due for publication late this year. Or early next year. It's a 650 page monster with 35 chapters and 60 authors and while I've never given birth, I suspect producing this thing will give me some sense of what that's like. When it comes out, buy it. We managed to assemble a fantastic group of authors [...]

Huntoniatonia sp. trilobite from the Bois D'Arc formation of Oklahoma 

From my experience collecting in the Bois D'Arc formation, I think that Huntoniatonia sp. (also sometimes called Huntonia) trilobites are possibly the most common trilobite to be found. I'm referring to the isolated parts of the trilobite not whole specimens. While there were a large number of whole Paciphacops sp. and Kaniops sp. fossils that I found I think I came across more detached pygidiums and cephalopns of Huntoniatonia sp. than anything else.I did find a few [...]

Standards dramatically advance streamflow and flood forecasting in the U.S. and elsewhere 

his is a story about how water data standards, computational hard work, high-performance computing, serendipity and synergy led to an operational capability for nationwide forecasting of streamflow and flooding at high-resolution, in near-real-time. This has been evolving for several years now, but has gone into hyper-drive in just the last couple

The Rim of Fire and the "Impending" Mega-Earthquakes: Look past the inflammatory headlines 

Every few years (or months) there is a flurry of activity, and everyone gets hot and bothered and worried that the world is about to come apart. There's concern, even panic, and then things settle down a bit and the subject gets forgotten for another couple of years (or months). Oh, you thought I was talking about earthquakes? No, I was talking about media storm ABOUT earthquakes. There

Platyceras sp. gastropod from the Bois D'Arc formation of Oklahoma 

As Platyceras sp. gastropods were abundant during the Devonian, it is no surprise to find one in the Bois D'Arc formation. This specimen has some added interest as there is a crinoid holdfast anchored to it.  The Platyceras shell is spiral shaped with a roughly rectangular cross section. The whorls are offset from the central axis and slightly angled. The exterior of the shell is decorated with wavy growth lines and some regular crenulations that follow the curve of the spiral. The crinoid [...]

Favosites conicus coral from the Bois D'Arc formation of Oklahoma 

Favosites conicus is perhaps the easiest coral to ID from the Bois d'Arc formation. It's typically a small colony that looks like a gumdrop or beehive.  The base of the coral colony is flat with a wrinkled epitheca that is indicative of the colony growing on a semisolid substrate. The rest of the colony forms a conical mound composed of interlocking hexagonal cells of varying size. I have not found many that are greater than an inch or two in diameter or height which likely indicates there [...]

Those sixteen issues of the Journal of Vertebrate Palaeontology found a good home! 

A couple of weeks ago, I said I was going to toss out my hardcopy issues of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology unless someone wanted them and was prepared to pay for shipping. The good news is that Andrew Stuck did want them. We got in touch and arranged shipping, and they arrived at his

A Long Way Gone 

I graduated with a master's degree a couple of months ago. Even though I have neglected this blog in recent years and I still don't feel like a real geophysicist, technically graduation marked the end of the Long Way to Go. My blog used to be an important part of the path I had started in 2007 and I therefore decided to conclude this chapter with one last entry. I created A Long Way to Go

Oklahoma is now officially the most dangerous place in the world for earthquakes 

Reference Yes, that's right.  As Susan Hough says: "Holy Crap!" Who knows what the units really mean?  They have totally mucked seismic hazard and risk.  Anyway, this place is due for New Madrid II, within a couple of years.  They live in the dream that they have calmed things down by cutting down the injection, but that was cut down ever since cheap oil.  I can make up plans for a

The pheasant comes apart 

A couple of weeks ago, I was given a pheasant, which I reduced to science and food. When we last saw it, it was down to a skinned and partially defleshed head/neck and feet. It’s been through a couple of defleshing rounds since then, and today I was able to take it fully apart: At the

Things You Find in the Field: Pyramidal Objects #4 

It's not a pyramid, unlike the three pyramidal objects (#1, #2, #3) I posted about a couple years back. It's actually a frustum, in this case a pyramidal frustum, one based on an oblique, irregular, triangular pyramid. That is, it's a "chopped" triangular pyramid. The rock itself was on an alluvial fan not far from Walker Lake; it was pointed out to me by MOH, who spotted it on our

Bridge and DP 

One year after I graduated from college, I went to work for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and spent my first two years at sea as a navigational officer on a couple of research ships.  I now use my past experience as a teaching tool in my physics classroom when teaching vectors.  Back then we had to use grease pencils on the radar screen to figure out anoth read

Reddit "Ask Me Anything" 

The scientists aboard the JR responded to our event last night in the same manner they've been tackling their research - as a collaborative body.  From 11pm to 1am local ship time, everyone had the chance to read over and put forth their opinions on the appropriate responses to the questions asked in the forum.  Given the limited bandwidth available on the ship, only a couple of compu read