When Parks Township Was Under a Tropical Sea
2026-11-01
A map of Earth about 305 million years ago, when the sea that formed the Brush Creek limestone covered western Pennsylvania.Read More →
Paleontology at the Dawn of the AI LLM Era
2026-10-29
Note: This will likely be out of date within a year or two of my writing it. This was my take in September of 2026. Writing manuscripts on paleontological subjects, especially Pennsylvanian-aged invertebrates, is not easy. The field is underfunded, and the age of discovery has long passed for today’sRead More →
Paleo Break
2025-01-20
When I started this website in 2019, I was spending a lot of time learning new things about paleontology and geology. The two contain a mountain (no pun intended) of information to absorb, and it took at least four years to understand most general concepts. My full-time profession is notRead More →
Schistoceras, a Goniatitid from the Portersville Limestone (Kasimovian)
2024-04-13
This is a short post to report specimens of Schistoceras from the Portersville Limestone in nearby West Virginia. The 1997 volume Pennsylvanian Cephalopods of Ohio reported only 21 nautiloid and bactritoid specimens from the Portersville in Ohio and no Schistoceras from that unit; in Ohio the genus is known onlyRead More →
Late Pennsylvanian (Kasimovian) Gastropods from the Glenshaw Formation, Armstrong County, Pennsylvania
2023-12-23
For 2023, I produced a twelve-month calendar featuring twelve genera of gastropods collected from rocks in Armstrong County, Pennsylvania. The calendar wasn’t a big seller, I sold it at cost via LuLu and gifted several copies to friends in the paleontology community. Calendar Back Panel Text The Glenshaw Formation inRead More →
Cephalopod Evolution in Action—The Morphometric Differences of Metacoceras and its Descendant Tainoceras Hyatt, 1883
2023-08-17
The coiled cephalopod Tainoceras Hyatt, 1883 has eluded me for years. They are missing for a good reason: the rocks I pull specimens from are too old to have them. Most coiled cephalopods I pull out of the rocks are from the genus Metacoceras Hyatt, 1883, which compete with PseudorthocerasRead More →
More Cut Fossil Late Paleozoic Gastropods from the Glenshaw Formation (Kasimovian)
2023-08-12
A recent discovery of a site with abundant roughly preserved Strobeus shells has piqued my curiosity for cutting them open to see the internal structure. The site occasionally preserves material with intact shells, but they are brittle and can shatter easily. During regular mashing of the limestone, they become disconnected,Read More →
Peripristis semicircularis
2023-06-15
Peripristis is a monotypic genus of fish known from Carboniferous rocks, belonging to the Pristodontidae Woodward, 1889. It could be called a form genus, as only isolated teeth are known today. The species semicircularis derives from its curved nature, which represents a portion of a circle. Ginter (2010) and LundRead More →
A Possible Mahoningoceras from the Portersville Limestone (Kasimovian), Brooke County, West Virginia
2023-04-24
I started my research thinking this fossil was Mahoningoceras Murphy 1974, then later thought it was smashed, had straight flank sutures, and was a Millkoninckioceras Kummel 1963. I reversed this decision again after comparing it to Millkoninckioceras and refocused on Mahoningoceras. Yet, I received a photo of the holotype fromRead More →
Euphemites nodocarinatus
2023-03-11
The gastropod Bellerophon nodocarinatus (=Euphemites nodocarinatus) was named by Hall in 1858 in a geological report of Iowa. The name means knotty/lumpy kneels (or carina), characterized by the dual lumpy ridges visible from the anterior margin across the shell. Members of Euphemites have spiral lirae that appear in the aperture and extend toward theRead More →