Excavation of Mummified Tertiary Wood in Canadian Arctic

由于只允许极少量的植物生长，今天的北极被视为冰雪气候。然而，1986年J.F.本项目的加拿大代表贝辛格和我们在1991年对埃尔斯米尔岛的初步调查告诉我们，北极温暖潮湿，以支持中生代和第三纪的茂密森林生长。化石林是指将活林就地埋藏保存的森林，它不仅使我们能够重建原始林分结构，如物种组成、树木的特殊分布和它们之间的竞争等，在1992年的野外考察中，对位于阿克塞尔海伯格岛大地丘以东的“化石森林山遗址”和位于埃尔斯米尔岛斯特拉斯科纳峡湾的“博物馆遗址”和“新遗址”进行了发掘和重建。在这三个遗址中，每一个都有几十个含森林的层理以埋藏和沉积的地质顺序暴露出来。化石森林山遗址的特征是未浸渍的层理层和化石树桩、原木和树叶凋落物仅木乃伊化但尚未硅化，而埃尔斯米尔岛上的两个遗址的层理和树木遗骸都被硅化。

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.