Lost Chicken Creek (Purdy Collection): Late/Upper Pleistocene, Alaska
collected by B. Purdy 1974

List of taxa
Where & when
Geology
Taphonomy & methods
Metadata & references
Taxonomic list
Mammalia - Proboscidea - Elephantidae
Mammuthus primigenius (Blumenbach 1799)
Mammalia - Perissodactyla - Equidae
Equus (Asinus) lambei Hay 1917
synonym of Equus niobrarensis alaskae
(6 measurements)
Equus (Asinus) cf. kiang (Moorcroft 1841)
Mammalia - Cervidae
Cervus elaphus Linnaeus 1758
Rangifer tarandus (Linnaeus 1758)
Mammalia - Bovidae
Ovis ? dalli Nelson 1884
Symbos cavifrons (Leidy 1852)
synonym of Bootherium bombifrons
Bison crassicornis Richardson 1854
synonym of Bison priscus
(8 measurements)
see common names

Geography
Country:United States State/province:Alaska
Coordinates: 64.1° North, 141.9° West (view map)
Paleocoordinates:64.0° North, 141.9° West
Basis of coordinate:stated in text
Geographic resolution:small collection
Time
Period:Quaternary Epoch:Pleistocene
10 m.y. bin:Cenozoic 6
Key time interval:Late/Upper Pleistocene
Age range of interval:0.12600 - 0.01170 m.y. ago
Age estimate:20500 ± 390 to 10050 ± 150 YBP (14C)
Stratigraphy
Stratigraphic resolution:group of beds
Stratigraphy comments: "late Wisconsin" with bone collagen radiocarbon dates of "26 760 +/- 300 years BP" (Equus sp., specimen collected in 1965 somewhere in the area but apparently not at the site), "20 500 +/- 390 years BP" (Symbos cavifrons), "10370 +/- 160 years BP" (bison tibia), and "10050 +/- 150 years BP" (Cervus elaphus)
Lithology and environment
Primary lithology:black unlithified carbonaceous siltstone
Lithology description: "a section exposed at the margin" of the nearby sluice pond includes "2.4-3.7 m of frozen black organic silt or 'muck" overlain by silt, and "Presumably, most of the mammal fossils are derived from near the bse of the frozen muck"
Environment:"floodplain"
Glacial or sequence phase:late glacial
Geology comments: "The relatively great spread of dates could be accounted for by massive downslope movement of mammalian remains [during early postglacial time] from the higher, former steppe-like areas where they were deposited throughout the late Wisconsin"
Taphonomy
Modes of preservation:body
Size of fossils:macrofossils
Feeding/predation traces:fractures
Spatial resolution:allochthonous
Collection methods and comments
Collection methods:selective quarrying,survey of museum collection
Reason for describing collection:general faunal/floral analysis
Collectors:B. Purdy Collection dates:1974
Collection method comments: "Pleistocene mammal bones have been washed out of the sediments... for many years and were picked up occasionally by local collectors" but this material apparently was "donated to the National Museums of Canada by Barbara Purdy" and apparently "excavated" in part or whole in 1974 collection
Taxonomic list comments:a different collection from Lost Chicken Creek but apparently not from one site was described by Whitmore and Foster (1967)
Metadata
Database number:93555
Authorizer:J. Alroy Enterer:J. Alroy
Modifier:J. Alroy Research group:vertebrate
Created:2010-01-24 12:08:50 Last modified:2010-01-24 14:10:38
Access level:the public Released:2010-01-24 12:08:50
Creative Commons license:CC BY
Reference information

Primary reference:

31685. C. R. Harington. 1980. Pleistocene mammals from Lost Chicken Creek, Alaska. Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences 17(2):168-198 [J. Alroy/J. Alroy/J. Ju]