Excavation of Mummified Tertiary Wood in Canadian Arctic

只允许最小的植物生长，今天的北极看起来是在冰雪气候下。然而，本项目的加拿大代表J.F.Basinger于1986年在阿克塞尔海贝格岛发现的化石森林和我们在1991年初步调查中发现的埃尔斯米尔岛的化石森林告诉我们，北极是温暖潮湿的，支持了中生代和第三纪茂盛的森林生长。化石森林从字面上讲就是在原地埋葬和保存活森林的森林，它不仅允许我们重建原始的林分结构，如物种组成、树木的特殊分布和它们之间的竞争等，而且还可以重建当时的总体气候和环境。1992年的实地考察中，挖掘和重建工作在阿克塞尔海贝格岛大地丘陵以东的“化石森林山址”和埃尔斯米尔岛斯特拉斯科纳湾的“博物馆遗址”和“新遗址”进行。在这三个地点中，每一个地点都暴露了数十个含森林的层状地层，按照埋葬和沉积的地质顺序。化石森林山遗址的特点是未浸泡的层状地层和化石树桩，原木和树叶凋落物仅木乃伊但尚未硅化，而埃尔斯米尔岛上的两个地点的层理被浸泡，树木遗骸被硅化。

Allowing only minimal plant growth, the Arctic today is looked under snow-and-ice climate. However, the fossil forests of Axel Heiberg Island found in 1986 by J.F. Basinger, the Canadian representative of present project, and of Ellesmere Island by ourselves in the 1991 preliminary survey tell us that the Arctic was warm and moist as to support lush forest growth in Mesozoic and Tertiary. The fossil forests are literally forests in which live forests were burried and preserved in situ and allow us to reconstruct not only such original stand structure as species composition, special distribution of trees and competition among them etc., but also the general climate and environment of the time.In the 1992 fieldwork, the excavation and reconstruction were carried out at the "Fossil Forest Hill Site" east of Geodetic Hills, Axel Heiberg island, and the "Museum Site" and "New Site" both on Strathcona fiord, Ellesmere Island. In each of the three sites, a score of forest-bearing beddings are exposed in a geological sequence of burial and deposition.The Fossil Forest Hill Site was characterized by undipped layers of bedding and fossil stumps, logs and leaf litters only mummified but not yet silicified, whereas bedding was dipped and tree remains were silicified at the both sites on Ellesmere Island.