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- Lab number
- I-3569
- Material dated
- horse bone collagen; collagène osseux de cheval
- Taxa dated
- Equus lambei metacarpal
- Locality
- Schmidt's mine, 640 m asl, 13 km from Hunker Creek summit, Dominion Creek, Klondike District, Yukon drainage, Yukon Territory
- Map sheet
- 115 O/15
- Submitter
- C.R. Harington
- Date submitted
- July 7, 0098
- Normalized Age
- 14870 ± 260
- Significance
- palaeobiology; paléobiologie
- Context
- interface of muck and gold-bearing gravel at a placer mine
- Associated taxa
- Mammalia: Equus lambei
- Comments
- KkVh-VP-28, Dawson Loc. 28: Matthews reports that an Arctic ground squirrel nest contained a seed cache, insect fossils, and the nearly complete skeleton of a ground squirrel (Spermophilus parryi) that evidently died in its hibernaculum. The exposure from which the nest comes, consists of frozen, organic silts (locally called "mucks") capping auriferous gravels. The exact position of the nest with respect to the surface is unknown, but it was found in situ near the silt/gravel contact. The age is in accord with another date (I-3659, 14,870 +/- 260 BP) on bones of Equus sp. also found near the contact of silts and gold bearing gravels but at another exposure in the same area (Harington, 1977). Fossilized ground squirrel nests have been found at other sites in the Dawson area as well as in Alaska where several have been dated (Péwé, 1975, Table 13). This is the first date on a ground squirrel nest from the Yukon Teritory. Such nests commonly provide a wealth of paleoecological data, and preliminary study of the nest dated by GSC-2641 indicates that it is no exception. In addition to the skeletal remains, the seeds from the seed cache and insects are numerous and exceptionally well preserved. The latter include larvai and adults of carrion beetles which probably occupied the nest after the ground squirrel had died. Among them is the carrion beetle Silpha coloradensis Wick., a rare beetle in Alaska-Yukon today. W. Blake, Jr. notes that X-ray diffraction showed that the crystals in the seed cache are gypsum. The portion of the sample dated is the material that floated on water.