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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.