At Wesleyan University
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
You may have wandered around the 4th floor of Exley Science Center, looking for your class in room 405, and caught a glance of a bison. And if you had just awoken from a short sleep the night before, you may have even thought that this bison was one of your sleep deprivation-induced hallucinations. Fear … Read more
On an otherwise mundane and maybe even a little boring and long list of state symbols, ranging from the state flower: “mountain laurel” to the state song: “Yankee Doodle,” Connecticut has an unusual symbol which is not well-known among its inhabitants: a state fossil. The Constitution State’s very own state fossil is Eubrontes giganteus, commonly … Read more
On the Fourth Floor of the Wesleyan Exley Science center is the Joe Webb Peoples Museum, named after the late Professor Joe Webb Peoples, who was chair of the Geology department (now named Earth and Environmental Sciences), from 1935 until his retirement in 1975. He was highly influential in the establishment of Dinosaur State Park when dinosaur … Read more