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Geology topics

C.A. Repenning

Publications and source records attributed to C.A. Repenning.

15 recordsLinked to original sources

Canyon Creek: A late Pleistocene vertebrate locality in interior Alaska

The Canyon Creek vertebrate-fossil locality is an extensive road cut near Fairbanks that exposes sediments that range in age from early Wisconsin to late Holocene. Tanana River gravel at the base of the section evidently formed during the Delta Glaciation of the north-central Alaska Range. Younger layers and lenses of fluvial sand are interbedded with arkosic gravel from Canyon Creek that contains tephra as well as fossil bones of an interstadial fauna about 40,000 years old. Solifluction deposits containing ventifacts, wedge casts, and rodent burrows formed during a subsequent period of periglacial activity that took place during the maximum phase of Donnelly Glaciation about 25,000–17,000 years ago. Overlying sheets of eolian sand are separated by a 9500-year-old paleosol that may correlate with a phase of early Holocene spruce expansion through central Alaska. The Pleistocene fauna from Canyon Creek consists of rodents (indicated by burrows), Mammuthus primigenius (woolly mammoth), Equus lambei (Yukon wild ass), Camelops hesternus (western camel), Bison sp. cf. B. crassicornis (large-horned bison), Ovis sp. cf. O. dalli (mountain sheep), Canis sp. cf. C. lupus (wolf), Lepus sp. cf. L. othus or L. arcticus (tundra hare), and Rangifer sp. (caribou). This assemblage suggests an open landscape in which trees and tall shrubs were either absent or confined to sheltered and moist sites. Camelops evidently was present in eastern Beringia during the middle Wisconsin interstadial interval but may have disappeared during the following glacial episode. The stratigraphic section at Canyon Creek appears to demonstrate that the Delta Glaciation of the north-central Alaska Range is at least in part of early Wisconsin age and was separated from the succeeding Donnelly Glaciation by an interstadial rather than interglacial episode.

Alaska

New evidence for the age of the Gubik Formation Alaskan North Slope

At several Alaskan North Slope localities south of the shore of the Arctic Ocean the Gubik Formation, herein regarded as latest Pliocene and Pleistocene in age, contains a marine unit at its base. Near Ocean Point and near Teshekpuk Lake this basal unit, or the lowest exposed marine unit, of the Gubik contains unusual, relatively warm-water marine mammals. Although these mammals have poorly known fossil histories, consideration of what is known suggests that the basal marine unit near Ocean Point is of latest Pliocene age, between 2.2 and 1.7 my old, and that the marine unit near Teshekpuk Lake is probably late Pleistocene, most likely correlating with the Sangamon Interglaciation and about 120,000 yr old. ?? 1983.

Quaternary Research

Pliocene and Pleistocene geologic and climatic evolution in the San Luis Valley of south-central Colorado

Sediments of the Alamosa Formation spanning the upper part of the Gauss and most of the Matuyama Chrons were recovered by coring in the high (2300 m) San Luis Valley of south-central Colorado. The study site is located at the northern end of the Rio Grande rift. Lithologic changes in the core sediments provide evidence of events leading to integration of the San Luis drainage basin into the Rio Grande. The section, which includes the Huckleberry Ridge Ash (2.02 Ma) and spans the entire Matuyama Chron, contains pollen, and invertebrate and vertebrate fossils. Stable isotope analyses of inorganic and biogenic carbonate taken over most of the core indicate substantially warmer temperatures than occur today in the San Luis Valley. At the end of the Olduvai Subchron, summer precipitation decreased, summer pan evaporation increased, and temperatures increased slightly compared to the earlier climate represented in the core. By the end of the Jaramillo Subchron, however, cold/wet and warm/dry cycles become evident and continue into the cold/wet regime associated with the deep-sea oxygen-isotope Stage 22 glaciation previously determined from outcrops at the same locality. Correspondence between the Hansen Bluff climatic record and the deep-sea oxygen-isotope record (oxygen-isotope stages from about 110-18) is apparent, indicating that climate at Hansen Bluff was responding to global climatic changes.

Colorado

Memorandum on ground-water investigation of four proposed stock wells in Puertocito Area, Socorro County and Canoncito Area, Bernalillo and Valencia Counties, New Mexico

At the request of the Navajo Service, Office ot Indian Affairs, a groundwater iinvestigation of four proposed stock wells in the Puertocito Area, Socorro county and the Canoncito Area., Bernalillo and Valencia counties,New Mexico, was made in November, 1951 (see fig. 1). Although these areas are not on the Navajo Indian Reservation, they were included in the program of study of ground-water resources or the Navajo and Hopi Indian Reservations now being conducted by the Ground Water Branch of the United States Geological Survey. The work was financed by and was in cooperation with the Navajo Service, Office of Indian Affairs.

New Mexico

Memorandum on possibility of developing ground water for irrigation along Toc Chinlin Wash near Emmanuel Mission, Navajo Indian Reservation, Apache County, Arizona

On November 21, 1949, the writers accompanied Mr. Chester Wilson of the Navajo Service Water Supply Office to Emmanuel Mission, Arizona, to investigate the adequacy of ground-water supplies adequate for irrigation along Toc Chinlin Wash. The investigation was made as part of the ground-water studies of the Geological Survey on the Navajo Indiana Reservation.

Arizona