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The Cape Deceit Fauna—Early Pleistocene Mammalian Assemblage from the Alaskan Arctic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

R. D. Guthrie  and
John V. Matthews Jr.
R. D. Guthrie
Affiliation:
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alaska, College, Alaska, 99071
John V. Matthews Jr.
Affiliation:
Department of Geology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta
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Abstract

Pleistocene exposures located near Cape Deceit on the south shore of Kotzebue Sound (Alaska) contain a complex sequence of organic sediments which have yielded fossil vertebrates of taxonomic, evolutionary, and zoogeographic significance. Cape Deceit Local Fauna from the Cape Deceit Formation, lowermost of three major stratigraphic units recognized at the site, contains representatives of the genera Canis, Rangifer, Cervus, Ochotona, Lemmus, Microtus, Pliomys, and a newly described genus and species, Predicrostonyx hopkinsi-predecessor of the extant genus Dicrostonyx. In addition to P. hopkinsi, new species of Ochotona, Pliomys, and Microtus are described from the Cape Deceit Local Fauna. the stage of evolution of Microtus deceitensis sp. n. and P. hopkinsi sp. n. indicate that the Cape Deceit Formation is at least of pre-Cromerian age. This assumption is substantiated by the stratigraphy of the overlying Inmachuk and Deering formations, fossils from these units (including Dicrostonyx torquatus and D. henseli), and C-14 dates. The Cape Deceit Local Fauna, therefore, contains the earliest North American record of several of the included genera in addition to the only North American record of Pliomys.

Stratigraphic features at the exposure indicate that the Cape Deceit Local Fauna mammals lived in a treeless (tundra) environment showing that the contemporary tundra mammalian fauna has a lengthy arctic-adapted evolutionary history. We postulate the existence in northeastern Eurasia and Alaska of a Pleistocene-Recent “Beringian” mammalian realm which has at times contributed to the fauna of more southern regions of the Palaerctic and Nearctic. The fact that this southern movement of arctic-adapted or arctic-derived Beringian mammals occurred at different times in Europe and North America (interpreted by some as indicating the existence of a “Beringian filter-bridge”) is, we think, due largely to differences of continental physiography and Pleistocene geography south of the Beringian area.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 1 , Issue 4 , December 1971 , pp. 474 - 510
Copyright
University of Washington

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