North Slope Alaska Ancient Megafauna Bones, Willow and Stratigraphic Data 2014-2018

• Main Author: Groves, Pamela
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: NSF Arctic Data Center 2020
• Subjects: Pleistocene; Beringia; Megafauna; Isotope; yedoma; Arctic; Ice; north slope; permafrost; Sea ice; Alaska
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.18739/a23r0pv05; https://arcticdata.io/catalog/view/doi:10.18739/A23R0PV05

These data are a comprehensive collection from the Pleistocene in Beringia in northern Alaska. The carbon-14 (14C) dates and isotopic data from megafaunal bones, willow and stratigraphic samples allow a reconstruction of the climate, zoological and botanical history of the region during the last 40,000 years. We have used these data in published manuscripts: Gaglioti, B.V., Mann, D.H., Groves, P., Kunz, M.L., Farquharson, L.M., Reanier, R.E., Jones, B.M., Wooller, M.J., 2018. Aeolian stratigraphy describes ice-age paleoenvironments in unglaciated Arctic Alaska. Quat Sci Rev 182, 175-190. Gaglioti, B.V., Mann, D.H., Wooller, M.J., Jones, B.M., Wiles, G.C., Groves, P., Kunz, M.L., Baughman, C.A., Reanier, R.E., 2017. Younger-Dryas cooling and sea-ice feedbacks were prominent features of the Pleistocene-Holocene transition in Arctic Alaska. Quat Sci Rev 169, 330-343. Mann, D.H., Groves, P., Reanier, R.E., Gaglioti, B.V., Kunz, M.L., Shapiro, B., 2015. Life and extinction of megafauna in the ice-age Arctic. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 112, 14301-14306. After developing a statistical approach to remove the age artifacts caused by radiocarbon calibration from a large series of dated megafaunal bones, we compared the temporal patterns of bone abundance with climate records. Megafaunal abundance tracked ice age climate, peaking during transitions from cold to warm periods. We used the oxygen isotope values of wood cellulose in living and sub-fossil willow shrubs (d18Owc) (Salix spp.) that have been radiocarbon-dated (14C) to produce a multi-millennial record of climatic change on Alaska's North Slope during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. We described the stratigraphy and sedimentology of a yedoma deposit in Arctic Alaska (the Carter Section) dating to between 37,000 and 9000 calibrated radiocarbon years BP (37e9 ka) and containing detailed records of loess and sand-sheet sedimentation, soil development, carbon storage, and permafrost dynamics.