![Geological Survey of Canada Geological Survey of Canada](/web/20061103005101im_/http://www.gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/esst_images/gsc_e.jpeg) Natural Resources Canada > Earth Sciences Sector > Geological Survey of Canada > Past lives: Chronicles of Canadian Paleontology
Past lives: Chronicles of Canadian Paleontology Cedar Lake amber
Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) saw nobility in the fragile remains in
amber,
"The Spider, Flye, and Ant, being tender dissipable substances,
falling into Amber, are therein buryed, finding theirin both a Death and
Tombe, preserving them better from Corruption than a Royal Monument."
![50 cm diameter arrangement of pieces of Upper Cretaceous amber from Grassy Lake. (Royal Tyrrell Museum Collections. Photo by BDEC (c).) 50 cm diameter arrangement of pieces of Upper Cretaceous amber from Grassy Lake. (Royal Tyrrell Museum Collections. Photo by BDEC (c).)](/web/20061103005101im_/http://www.gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/paleochron/images/scan04.jpg) 50 cm diameter arrangement of pieces of Upper Cretaceous amber from Grassy Lake.
(Royal Tyrrell Museum Collections. Photo by BDEC (c).) |
Before the Saskatchewan River can disgorge into Lake Winnipeg in
central Manitoba, it has to enter Cedar Lake. This lake acts as a giant
settling pond where lumps of amber, coal fragments and shells accumulate
at the mouth of the river. The amber is not local; it came from a thousand
kilometres away, from the valleys of the Red Deer and South Saskatchewan
rivers where low-grade coal deposits with amber nodules of Late Cretaceous
age are exposed widely.
In 1934 Thomas Walker, a mineralogist from the Royal Ontario Museum,
noted the presence of insects and spiders in Cedar Lake amber. At that
time, no diverse insect fauna was known from Cretaceous amber, so it was
not surprising that Frank Carpenter, the Curator of Fossil Insects at the
Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, asked to borrow this
insect-bearing amber. Walker dispatched 87 amber insects and, in 1937 when
Carpenter and six specialists published formal descriptions, they
recognized no fewer than 23 new species, seven new genera and two new
families in this small collection. This fauna was, at the time, the most
diverse insect fauna known from the Cretaceous of North America.
Among the specialists describing the Cedar Lake insects and arachnids
was Professor Alfred Kinsey of Indiana University who focussed on the
taxonomy of living and fossil gall wasps before he began working
exclusively on human sexuality which culminated in publication of Sexual
Behavior of the Human Male and Female in 1948 and 1953. The
gall wasp from Cedar Lake amber proved to be the oldest and most primitive
member of the gall wasp family Cynipidae.
The most comprehensive assessment of Cedar Lake amber and its fossils
was provided by two entomologists from Agriculture Canada in 1969. J.
McAlpine and J. Martin reviewed all previous work on the deposit and
examined all available collections in order to assemble the best estimate
possible of diversity and abundance. They tallied an astonishing 70
families of insects, 12 families of spiders, plus a tardigrade (so-called
"water bear"), crustacean and amoeboid. This variety of animals
means that the central Manitoba amber deposit is among the most diverse
Cretaceous amber localities anywhere in the world. But it is not
particularly abundant -- only one piece of amber in fifty contains a
fossil.
Further reading:
McAlpine, J.F. and Martin, J.E.H. |
1969: |
Canadian amber -- a paleontological treasure chest. Canadian Entomologist, vol. 101, p. 819-838. |
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