Mid-Pliocene warm-period deposits in the High Arctic yield insight into camel evolution

The mid-Pliocene was a global warm period, preceding the onset of Quaternary glaciations. Here we use cosmogenic nuclide dating to show that a fossiliferous terrestrial deposit that includes subfossil trees and the northern-most evidence of Pliocene ice wedge casts in Canada's High Arctic (Elle...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature Communications
Main Authors: Rybczynski, N. (Natalia), Gosse, J.C. (John C.), Richard Harington, C. (C.), Wogelius, R.A. (Roy A.), Hidy, A.J. (Alan J.), Buckley, M. (Mike)
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: 2013
Subjects:
Arctic
Nunavut
Ellesmere Island
Online Access:https://ir.library.carleton.ca/pub/23158
https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms2516
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Summary:The mid-Pliocene was a global warm period, preceding the onset of Quaternary glaciations. Here we use cosmogenic nuclide dating to show that a fossiliferous terrestrial deposit that includes subfossil trees and the northern-most evidence of Pliocene ice wedge casts in Canada's High Arctic (Ellesmere Island, Nunavut) was deposited during the mid-Pliocene warm period. The age estimates correspond to a general maximum in high latitude mean winter season insolation, consistent with the presence of a rich, boreal-type forest. Moreover, we report that these deposits have yielded the first evidence of a High Arctic camel, identified using collagen fingerprinting of a fragmentary fossil limb bone. Camels originated in North America and dispersed to Eurasia via the Bering Isthmus, an ephe

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