Month: July 2017

Fossil leaves from the Florissant fossil beds in Colorado (~ 34 Million years old). Fossils of dinosaurs, trilobites, and wooly mammoths typically attract more public attention than fossil plants. Although they are not as eye-catching to most people, fossil plants are far more important than this lack of  interest suggests. They help reconstruct the morphology … Read more

There is always something mystical about going underground. Since antiquity, people have always pondered the possibility of a subterranean realm – a sort of magical or hellish place right beneath our feet. In all world’s civilizations and religions, from the Greek Underworld to the Christian Hell, people have been fascinated the world’s underground. In the … Read more

The Joe Webb People Museum at Wesleyan University has many fossils and some natural history exhibits, but it pales in comparison to the massive Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. The Peabody Museum occupies a three-story building, and has an extensive storage space for specimens in the adjacent Environmental Science building and even more at … Read more

A crinoid fossil from Crawfordsville, Indiana in the Wesleyan University Joe Webb Peoples Museum (4th Floor Exley Science Center). Crinoids are organisms that are neither abundant nor familiar to most people in today’s oceans. However, during most of the Paleozoic Era (from the Ordovician on) and in the early Mesozoic (Late Triassic through Jurassic), crinoids … Read more

We are looking for documentation of the many fossils in the Wesleyan Collections, with much information in ancient, handwritten ‘accession books’ (dating back to the 19th century). In reading through the pages of these accession books, which in faded handwriting show which fossils were received in the Wesleyan Museum, when they came in, who collected … Read more

For many, the Connecticut River, the longest river in New England, is a serene waterway, enriching Middletown and Wesleyan University with its broad expanse of quiet waters. The main artery of the Connecticut River Valley can be traced from ‘Fourth Connecticut Lake’ in New Hampshire (with its watershed reaching into Canada) to Old Saybrook/Old Lyme … Read more

Exley Science Center does not exactly seem to be the most mysterious place on the Wesleyan campus, but few people know about the existence of ‘The Penthouse’. If you have ever taken a class in one of the natural science fields, frequented the lovely Science Library, or patronized the comfort coffee of the Pi Café, … Read more