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Northernmost record of brontotheres, Axel Heiberg Island, Canada—Implications for age of the Buchanan Lake Formation and brontothere paleobiology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2015

Jaelyn J. Eberle  and
John E. Storer
Jaelyn J. Eberle
Affiliation:
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Mailstop 170, Rice University, 6100 Main Street, Houston, Texas 77005-1892
John E. Storer
Affiliation:
Yukon Department of Tourism, Heritage Branch, Post Office Box 2703, Whitehorse, Yukon 71A 2C6
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Extract

Eocene land vertebrates are rare, relatively recent, discoveries in the Canadian Arctic islands. The first were discovered in 1975 in Eocene-aged strata of the Eureka Sound Group, western Ellesmere Island, and reported by Dawson et al. (1976). Subsequent discoveries occurred in the 1980s in similar-aged strata on both Ellesmere and Axel Heiberg islands (Dawson, 1990; Dawson et al., 1993), bringing the tally of vertebrate families to over 30 (Marincovich et al., 1990; Dawson, 1990). The vertebrate fauna provides strong evidence for a mild, equable Arctic climate during the Eocene (Estes and Hutchison, 1980), corroborated by the paleoflora (Axelrod, 1984; Basinger, 1986, 1991). Supporting this interpretation, the isotopically-determined mean ocean surface temperature at 70°N was a mild 10-15°, a far cry from today's mean of −10° (Barron, 1987; Shackleton and Boersma, 1981; McKenna, 1980).

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Paleontology , Volume 73 , Issue 5 , September 1999 , pp. 979 - 983
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

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