Chemawinit

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Chemawinite (rarer in the spelling chemavinite ) is the name for a Cretaceous fossil resin that is found on the shores of Cedar Lake in Manitoba (Canada).

Origin of name

This fossil resin is named after an Indian tribe living near Cedar Lake. The name Cedarit , also used in literature, goes back to the German geologist Richard Klebs , who investigated this resin at the end of the 19th century, but did not know at the time that it had already been introduced in the literature under the name Chemawinit.

Find situation

The location on the west bank of Cedar Lake is undoubtedly not the primary deposit of this fossil resin. It is believed that the mostly small pieces of amber from Cretaceous formations above Cedar Lake are washed out and washed over the Saskatchewan River into the lake and from there to the shore. The vast majority of the finds date from the time up to the construction of the Grand Rapids Dam, which was completed in the late 1960s. Since then the finds have declined sharply.

Inclusions

This type of amber is of great scientific interest because of its numerous organic inclusions; including the oldest known tardigrade Beorn leggi . Amber from Cedar Lake is the most important source of fossil arthropods in Canada, along with finds from Grassy Lake in Alberta of about the same age .

History of the exploration of Chemawinit

Chemawinit from Cedar Lake is first mentioned by Joseph Burr Tyrrell (1891). For some time the amber was collected in order to make lacquer from it. The work by Carpenter et al. Published in 1937 is considered to be the beginning of scientific research into organic inclusions. In the period that followed, the first scientific amber collections were made. Significant public collections are now housed in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts), the Canadian National Collection (CNC) (Ottawa, Ontario), and the Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto, Ontario).

literature

  • George O. Poinar , Jr .: Life in Amber . 350 pp., 147 figs., 10 plates, Stanford University Press, Stanford (Cal.) 1992. ISBN 0-8047-2001-0
  • Ryan C. McKellar & Alexander P. Wolfe: Canadian Amber . In: D. Penney (Ed.): Biodiversity of fossils in amber from the major world deposits : pp. 149–166, Manchester 2010, ISBN 978-0-9558636-4-6 .
  • JB Tyrrell: Fossil resin (“amber”) . In: Can. Geol. Surv. Rep. Ann. Rep. 5: 14-15, Ottawa 1891.
  • FM Carpenter et al .: Insects and arachnids from Canadian amber . In: Univ. Toronto Stud., Geo. Ser. 40: 7-62, Toronto 1937.
  • JF McAlpine & JEH Martin: Canadian amber - a palaeontological treasure-chest . In: Can. Entomol. 101: 819-838, Ottawa 1969.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ R. Klebs: Cedarite, a new amber-like resin from Canada and its comparison with other fossil resins. - Yearbook of the royal Prussian geological state office. Berlin, 1897.