![]() ![]() Studies of pollen and plant macrofossils indicate that a larch-dominated Boreal Forest margin habitat with grassy patches surrounded the beaver pond. Many of these species are related to Early Pliocene mammals from the Yushe Basin (about 5 to 4 million years ago) in northern China, and probably reached the Canadian High Arctic before that period via Beringia - a land mass then connecting Eurasia and North America. The vertebrate remains are particularly interesting, consisting of fishes, frogs, birds and mammals, including new kinds of shrew, mouse, a small wolflike animal, badger, horse and "deerlet." Bones most commonly found represent a small, extinct beaver, rabbit, primitive black bear and several members of the weasel family. These fossils give the first insight into what terrestrial life was like in the High Arctic some 4 million years ago. The small exposure of peaty, fossil-bearing beds have produced tree trunks up to 3 m long, many beaver-cut sticks (some burned by forest fires), remains of freshwater mollusks, insects, pollen, plant macrofossils (such as twigs, cones and leaves) and vertebrates. It is the world's most northerly Early Pliocene vertebrate locality. The site, which is located near the head of Strathcona Fiord (78☃3'N), was discovered by Geological Survey of Canada geologist John Fyles in 1961. ![]() Toward the close of the Tertiary (5 to 2 million years ago) and the beginning of the ice age (Quaternary - about 2 million years ago), a beaver pond existed on what is now Canada's Ellesmere Island, Nunavut. ![]()
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