Skip to Main Content
Skip Nav Destination
GEOREF RECORD

Wood jams or beaver dams? Pliocene life, sediment and landscape interactions in the Canadian High Arctic

Neil S. Davies, John C. Gosse, Alexandra Rouillard, Natalia Rybczynski, Jin Meng, Alberto V. Reyes and Jarloo Kiguktak
Wood jams or beaver dams? Pliocene life, sediment and landscape interactions in the Canadian High Arctic (in Deep time biogeomorphology; the co-evolution of life and sediments, Neil S. Davies (prefacer), William J. McMahon (prefacer), Anthony P. Shillito (prefacer) and Ben J. Slater (prefacer))
Palaios (June 2022) 37 (6): 330-347

Abstract

During the mid-Pliocene (Zanclean, ca. approximately 3.9 Ma), parts of the Canadian High Arctic experienced mean annual temperatures that were 14-22 degrees C warmer than today and supported diverse boreal-type forests. The landscapes of this vegetated polar region left behind a fragmented sedimentary record that crops out across several islands in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago as the Beaufort Formation and correlative strata. Paleoecological information from these strata provides a high-fidelity window onto Pliocene environments, and prominent fossil sites yield unparalleled insights into Cenozoic mammal evolution. Significantly, many of the strata reveal evidence for life-sediment interactions in a warm-climate Arctic, most notably in the form of extensive woody debris and phytoclast deposits. This paper presents original field data that refines the sedimentological context of plant debris accumulations from the anactualistic High Arctic forests, most notably at the 'Fyles Leaf Beds' and 'Beaver Pond' fossil-bearing sites in the 'high terrace deposits' of central Ellesmere Island. The former is a remarkably well-preserved, leaf-rich deposit that is part of a complex of facies associations representing lacustrine, fluvio-deltaic and mire deposition above a paleotopographic unconformity. The latter yields tooth-marked woody debris within a peat layer that also contains a rich assemblage of vertebrate and plant fossils including abundant remains from the extinct beaver-group Dipoides. Here we present sedimentological data that provide circumstantial evidence that the woody debris deposit at Beaver Pond could record dam-building in the genus, by comparing the facies motif with new data from known Holocene beaver dam facies in England. Across the Pliocene of the High Arctic region, woody debris accumulations are shown to represent an array of biosedimentary deposits and landforms including mires, driftcretions, woody bedforms, and possible beaver dams, which help to contextualize mammal fossil sites, provide facies models for high-latitude forests, and reveal interactions between life and sedimentation in a vanished world that may be an analogue to that of the near-future.


ISSN: 0883-1351
EISSN: 1938-5323
Serial Title: Palaios
Serial Volume: 37
Serial Issue: 6
Title: Wood jams or beaver dams? Pliocene life, sediment and landscape interactions in the Canadian High Arctic
Title: Deep time biogeomorphology; the co-evolution of life and sediments
Author(s): Davies, Neil S.Gosse, John C.Rouillard, AlexandraRybczynski, NataliaMeng, JinReyes, Alberto V.Kiguktak, Jarloo
Author(s): Davies, Neil S.prefacer
Author(s): McMahon, William J.prefacer
Author(s): Shillito, Anthony P.prefacer
Author(s): Slater, Ben J.prefacer
Affiliation: University of Cambridge, Department of Earth Sciences, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Affiliation: University of Cambridge, Department of Earth Sciences, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Pages: 330-347
Published: 202206
Text Language: English
Publisher: Society for Sedimentary Geology, Tulsa, OK, United States
References: 84
Accession Number: 2022-049091
Categories: Stratigraphy
Document Type: Serial
Bibliographic Level: Analytic
Illustration Description: illus. incl. sects., geol. sketch maps
N78°28'60" - N78°32'60", W82°37'60" - W82°22'00"
Secondary Affiliation: Dalhousie University, CAN, CanadaUniversity of Copenhagen, DNK, DenmarkCanadian Museum of Nature, CAN, CanadaAmerican Museum of Natural History, USA, United StatesUniversity of Alberta, CAN, Canada
Country of Publication: United States
Secondary Affiliation: GeoRef, Copyright 2022, American Geosciences Institute. Reference includes data from GeoScienceWorld, Alexandria, VA, United States. Reference includes data supplied by SEPM (Society for Sedimentary Geology), Tulsa, OK, United States
Update Code: 2022
Close Modal

or Create an Account

Close Modal
Close Modal