History of Life
Processes & Concepts of Geology
Invertebrate Paleontology
Sedimentology & Stratigraphy

Special Topics: Creationism
Special Topics: Desert Geology

Independent Study

Nonsense! (And Why It's So Popular)

Research Interests:

The core of my research is the evolutionary paleoecology of marine encrusting and boring faunas, with related work on the systematics and evolution of encrusting bryozoans, foraminiferans and brachiopods, and the development and early diagenesis of marine carbonate rocks. (Please see my complete C.V. for more information.) My most productive line of work has been with carbonate hardgrounds (ancient cemented seafloors) and the organisms which inhabited them through the Phanerozoic. It is this interest which attracted me to the Eemian coral reefs in the Bahamas. While exploring these fossil reefs on San Salvador Island in 1992, my colleagues and I discovered an erosion surface formed during a sea level fall and rise about 125,000 years ago. This surface is unusual because of the stable tectonic setting and its well-constrained dating by Al Curran and Brian White of Smith College. Initial work on this sea-level event has been published (White et al., 1998; Wilson et al., 1998), and more work remains to be done. I am excited about this research because it connects my paleontological and sedimentological interests with paleoclimatology, and it is ideal for involving undergraduate students.

I am also enthusiastic about ongoing work with my friend Paul Taylor at the Natural History Museum in London. He and I have had a lot of enjoyable fieldwork, including a trip to the United Arab Emirates and Oman to study Late Cretaceous hard substrate communities (see Wilson and Taylor, 2001). We are also working to solve the many mysteries of the enigmatic hederelloids. Another English friend, Tim Palmer (Executive Officer of the Palaeontological Association), and I are working on several issues related to the paleontology of "calcite seas" and bioerosion. I have a website dedicated to bioerosion, especially marine macrobioerosion, and I recently received a generous grant from the American Chemical Society (Petroleum Research Fund) to study what Tim and I have termed the "Ordovician Bioerosion Revolution".

I have projects in the Mesozoic of Israel with my friends Amihai Sneh and Yoav Avni of the Geological Survey of Israel. You can view many photographs from our 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2007 fieldwork. The 2004 trip to Israel included two Senior I.S. students, Allison Mione and Kevin Wolfe; in 2005 I worked with Jeff Bowen; in 2007 with Meredith Sharpe and Sophie Lehmann.

In 2006 I took Elyse Zavar ('07) to Poland for her I.S. fieldwork in the excellent Jurassic sections there. We worked with Michal Krobicki of the AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków. The 2006 Poland expedition field photographs are now online. I followed this trip with fieldwork in the fascinating Ordovician of Estonia with Olev Vinn of the University of Tartu. In 2007 I again visited Olev in Estonia, this time with Senior I.S. student Andrew Milligan to study encrusters on Echinosphaerites in the Ordovician kukersite oil shale.

Ohio has abundant and diverse Ordovician fossils in the region around Cincinnati. In 1999, Carol Tang (California Academy of Sciences) and I led a Keck Geology project through these outcrops, concentrating on questions ranging from community paleoecology to sequence stratigraphy. This project was called "Keck Ohio."

I regularly update a Bibliography of Lithologic Substrates (PDF format) for the use of anyone interested in fossil and recent communities on carbonate hardgrounds and rockgrounds. It is cross-indexed by authors, geologic period, geographic region, and date of publication. Also available is a Bibliography of Marine Bioerosion.

Please also see my short page on the battle for evolution in the public schools.

Additional links --

Invertebrate Paleontology at The College of Wooster
Sedimentology and Stratigraphy at The College of Wooster

Geology Courses at Wooster

Professor Wilson's Independent Study student pages

Publications in the Past Five Years:

Curran, H.A., Mylroie, J.E., Gamble, D.W., Wilson, M.A., Davis, L.R., Sealy, N.E. and Voegeli, V.J. 2004. Geology of Long Island, Bahamas: A Field Trip Guide. 12th Symposium on the Geology of the Bahamas and Other Carbonate Regions. Gerace Research Center. San Salvador, Bahamas.

Curran, H.A., Wilson, M.A. and Mylroie, J.E. 2007. Fossil palm frond and tree trunk molds: occurrence and implications in Bahamian Quaternary carbonate eolianites, p. 178-190. Proceedings of the 13th Symposium on the Geology of the Bahamas: Gerace Research Center. San Salvador, Bahamas.

Ernst, A., Taylor, P.D. and Wilson, M.A. 2007. Ordovician bryozoans from the Kanosh Formation (Whiterockian) of Utah, USA. Journal of Paleontology 81: 998-1008.

Palmer, T.J. and M.A. Wilson. 2004. Calcite precipitation and dissolution of biogenic aragonite in shallow Ordovician calcite seas. Lethaia 37: 417-427.

Taylor, P. D. and M. A. Wilson. 2003. Palaeoecology and evolution of marine hard substrate communities. Earth-Science Reviews 62: 1-103.

Taylor, P.D. and Wilson, M.A. 2007. Morphology and affinities of hederelloid “bryozoans”, p. xxx-xxx. International Bryozoology Association Conference; Boone, North Carolina (in press).

Wilson, M.A. 2004. Cornulitids, coleoloids and sphenothallids, p. 218-220. In: Webby, B.D., Paris, F. and Droser, M. (eds.), The Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event. Columbia University Press, New York, 484 pages.

Wilson, M.A. 2006. Dinosaurs, p. 198-204, In: Hall, D.R. and Hall, S. (eds.), American Icons: People, Places, and Things That Have Shaped Our Culture. Greenwood Publishing Group, Westport, Connecticut, 3 volumes, 870 pages

Wilson, M.A. 2007. Macroborings and the evolution of bioerosion, p. 356-367. In: Miller, W. III (ed.), Trace Fossils: Concepts, Problems, Prospects. Elsevier, Amsterdam, 611 pages..

Wilson, M.A. 2008. An online bibliography of bioerosion references, p. xxx-xxx. In: Wisshax, M. and Tapanila, L. (eds.), Current developments in bioerosion. Erlangen Earth Conference Series (in press).

Wilson, M.A., Feldman, H.R., Bowen, J.C., and Avni, Y. 2007. A new equatorial, very shallow marine sclerozoan fauna from the Middle Jurassic (late Callovian) of southern Israel. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology (in press).

Wilson, M.A. and Palmer, T.J. 2006. Patterns and processes in the Ordovician Bioerosion Revolution. Ichnos 13: 109-112.

Wilson, M.A. and Taylor, P.D. 2006. Predatory drillholes and partial mortality in Devonian colonial metazoans. Geology 34: 565-568.

Wilson, M.A., Wolfe, K.R., and Avni, Y. 2005. Development of a Jurassic rocky shore complex (Zohar Formation, Makhtesh Qatan, southern Israel). Israel Journal of Earth Sciences 54: 171-178.