The Joe Webb Peoples Fossil Collection
At Wesleyan University
Waking from a 60 year-old torpor, our Glyptodon no longer remembers her name. Nevertheless, she would love to hear you call her each time you walk by, so do come up with an exciting name that she will love! The contestant who nominated the chosen name will win a genuine fossil from Wesleyan’s 190 year-old natural history … Read more
We are very excited to announce a visit to Wesleyan by Dr. Kirk Johnson, Sant Director, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. Dr Johnson will give a public lecture: Natural History in the Age of Humans. The lecture is scheduled for 1 March 2018, 7:30 pm, in room Shanklin 107, and will be followed by … Read more
We made some headway with the Glyptodon restoration: the tail was once more fixed to the carapace, and repairs were made to its internal structure =. Then we cleaned Glyptodon. Now we still have to fill in a few damaged spots (see white spot in left image), and probably provide a new coat of paint. … Read more
The Glyptodon carapace (see earlier blogs for more background information on the Wesleyan Glyptodon) was partially unpacked, so we could for the first time since 1957 inspect it – still in pretty good shape. It needs cleaning from 60 years of dust accumulation, some restoration, a new coat of paint, and re-attachment of the tail. … Read more
Today we finally moved the crate with the plaster cast of the Glyptodon body-skeleton (see earlier blogs) from the tunnels underneath Foss Hill to the machine shop at the ground level of Exley. The name Glyptodon was given by Richard Owen (1839), who was the first to realize that a number of fossils described as separate animals … Read more
In this special edition of Unseen Wesleyan, we interviewed Mr. Paul Hadzima ’59, the last student curator of the Orange Judd Museum of Natural History. He worked at the museum in 1957, the year when the Judd Museum ceased to exist. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts in Geology, and a MAT with a concentration … Read more
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