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Lab number
GSC-1814
Field number
CR-72-42
Material dated
beaver-gnawed poplar wood; bois de peuplier rongé par des castors
Taxa dated
Populus sp. (12.85 g, id. by L.D. Farley-Gill)
Locality
about 32 km west of Arctic Red River and west of Frog Creek, Northwest Territories
Map sheet
106 M/08
Submitter
C.R. Harington
Date submitted
February 20, 0098
Measured Age
9500 ± 90
Normalized Age
9490 ± 90
δ13C (per mil)
-25.6
Significance
palaeobiology; paléobiologie
Context
a roadcut along a newly constructed section of the Dempster Highway; along with other gnawed poplar and willow sticks, probably from a beaver dam
Associated taxa
Mammalia: Castor canadensis (inferred from gnaw-marks on wood)
Comments
MiTt-VP: A large quantity of buried wood encountered during construction of the Dempster Highway was bulldozed onto the slope of the highway cut, presumably because it was recognized as unusual. No stratigraphy was exposed at the time Millar collected the sample, but the setting suggested that the wood originally have been intercalated within till. Harington commented that the age of these beaver-cut sticks, considered to be part of an ancient beaver dam, is of interest because it suggests that beavers (probably Castor canadensis) had occupied a habitat only 2° south of their present interglacial limit of 69° N in this region by the close of the Wisconsinan glaciation. Presumably the sticks were derived from organic material overlying till in the roadcut rather than coming from below till as originally thought by Millar. O.L. Hughes commented that the roadcut is through a broad ridge within an area of hummocky moraine. Till of hummocky moraine in the region is locally ice rich and subject to thermokarst subsidence and retrogressive thaw flow slides. The wood could have been buried beneath slumping or flowing till considerably after original deposition of the till.

References