- Oct 7, 2011
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Pewe 1975a’.Are you capable of naming one in particular?
‘Alaska, like northern Siberia, has long been famous for the abundant remains of extinct Pleistocene mammals, found in frozen deposits along major rivers and in the valleys of many minor streams. The earliest account of these fossils seems to be that of Kotzebue (1821, p. who found abundant vertebrate remains at Elephant Point in Eschscholtz Bay during his expedition to the Chukchi Sea in 1816). F. W. Beechey also collected there, and the mammal bones were reported by Buckland (1831). Because early explorers (Dall, 1869, 1873) reported a great abundance of bones, several expeditions were conducted in Alaska in the hope of finding complete skeletons or perhaps even frozen carcasses comparable with those found in Siberia (Maddren, 1905; Gilmore, 1908; Quackenbush, 1909). When large-scale gold mining began in the Fairbanks district in 1928, extensive fossil collecting was undertaken there and elsewhere in Alaska by the late 0. W. Geist and others on behalf of the American Museum of Natural History. A small part of this material has been described by Frick (1937) and Skinner and Kaisen (1947). Later, Geist and others collected vertebrate fossils from the Fairbanks area and northern Alaska for the Museum of the University of Alaska. Some of the most detailed work ever done on the late Pleistocene mammals in central and western Alaska was that by Guthrie (1966a, b, c; 1967; 1968a, b; Guthrie and Matthews, 1971), who studied collections that he had made, as well as the vast collection of Geist.
‘The greatest collection of vertebrate specimens is from the Fairbanks area, where tens of thousands of specimens have been collected during the past 30 years. For example, in 1938, a typical year, 8,008 cataloged specimens weighing about 8 tons were collected by 0. W. Geist and shipped to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City (University of Alaska, “Collegian,” 1938, fall). Partial lists of mammals from the Fairbanks area were given by Frick (1930, 1937), Wilkerson (1932, p. 422), Mertie (1937, p. 191), Stock (1942), Hibben (1943), Taber (1943, p. 1487), Skinner and Kaisen (1947), Skarland (1949, p. 132-133), Pewe (1952a, table 4), Geist (1953), Pewe and Hopkins (1967), and Guthrie (1968a).
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