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Story credit: Heidi Henderson | Photo courtesy of benet2006
Plant fossils from the Okanagan highlands, an area centred in the Interior of British Columbia, provide important clues to an ancient climate.
While the area is referred to as the Okanagan, the term is used in a slightly misleading fashion to describe an arc of Eocene lakebed sites that extend from Smithers in the north, down to the fossil site of Republic Washington. The grouping includes the fossil sites of Driftwood Canyon, Quilchena, Allenby, Tranquille, McAbee, Princeton and Republic.
These fossil sites range in time from Early to Middle Eocene, and the fossil they contain give us a snapshot of what was happening in this part of the world because of the varied plant fossils they contain.
While the area around the Interior of British Columbia was affected. McAbee was not as warm as some of the other Middle Eocene sites, a fact inferred by what we see and what is conspicuously missing.
In looking at the plant species, it has been suggested that the area of McAbee had a more temperate climate, slightly cooler and wetter than other Eocene sites to the south at Princeton, British Columbia and Republic and Chuckanut, Washington.
Missing are the tropical Sabal (palm), seen at Princeton and the impressive Ensete (banana) and Zamiaceae (cycad) found at Republic and Chuckanut, Washington.
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I admit I’m not real familiar with the Eocene. Would you mind in filling me in, please?
Hey Raptor,
The Eocene is considered to be 33.9 +_ 0.1 to 55.8 +_ 0.2 million years ago. From a climate perspective, the fossil record tells us that this part of British Columbia and much of the Earth was significantly warmer around that time, so warm in fact that we find temperate and tropical plant fossils in areas that now sport plants that prefer much colder climes, or as is the case in the Arctic, snow and ice.
A sediment core excavated from 400m below the seabed of the Arctic Ocean in 2004 showed that Fifty-five million years ago the North Pole was ice-free enjoying tropical temperatures and the sea temperature was about 20C, instead of the average we see now of about –1.5C, a truth that is hard to imagine today even with all the hype around global warming.
The bottom end of that core helped explain the warmer temperatures seen at McAbee and around the globe by revealing a dramatic global event known at the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.
It looks as though a gigantic emission of greenhouse gases was released into the atmosphere and the global temperature warmed by about 5C. While we are the likely culprits of much of the warming of the Arctic today, natural processes operating in the not too distant past have also resulted in significant temperature fluxuations on a world-wide scale.
From the fossil plant record, we see palm fronds from this time period all the way up Alaska, providing amazing insight and a fantastic view back in time.
Cheers,
Heidi aka Fossil Huntress
Nice story and good picture, almost makes one wonder if our global warming is natural or a industrial revolutionary consequence?
Thanks Heidi! :)
We are definitely contributing to global warming but it is a cyclical phenomena here on Earth. We’re actually living in a mini ice age right now by global temperature standards.
wow lot of info thanks! :)
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Hello David,
Very nice of you to offer your fossils for sale. Unfortunately, I do not buy them. Good luck!
i love plants for <a href="http://www.mayoreo.com/en/wholesale/hogar" title="home">home</a> this one is ware
Hello Angela and David,
We thank you for your attempt at business at Dinosaur Home, but some of us do not purchase them if we can help it. Another important thing, we really do not care much for sales or spam on this site. One of our main goals (meaning me and the Administrators) is to limit spam on this site. However, we’re not saying that your business is not welcome. Rather, there is a section of the forum to advertise for your business, yet sadly, that place is not on the threads or blog posts like this one. ;) For more information, please contact one of the administrators for assistance in locating the site.
Thank you,
Raptor Lewis
Forum Moderator