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Bringing the South Dakota southern Black Hills Mammoth Site formation and fossil discovery to light: a chronological reassignment using Luminescence Dating

Metadata Updated: July 20, 2024

The Mammoth Springs (MS) fossil site at Hot Springs, South Dakota, provides a unique opportunity to reconstruct paleoenvironmental conditions. We used luminescence dating on fine sand sized potassium feldspars to establish a chronological framework for the site. In addition, we dated a late Pleistocene paludal proxy site using luminescence and incorporated those results with previous radiocarbon dating. Radiocarbon dating of the MS sinkhole organics suggested that the ages of the sediments that hosted the fossils was ~22-26 ka, while luminescence dating on feldspar grains suggested substantially older ages of ~130-255 ka. Analysis of the equivalent dose dispersion of the luminescence samples showed that the sediments were mostly well bleached prior to deposition. This analysis suggests that eolian and shallow fluvial processes were the dominant transport for sediments into the sinkhole, and that luminescence provides a reliable, more rigorous chronology of the MS fossil site. The luminescence ages (n = 6), show that the fossil-bearing sediments span all of Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 6 and MIS 7 with the sinkhole drying, cementing, and completely infilling at the start of the MIS 5 at the end of the global penultimate glacial maximum.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date July 20, 2024
Metadata Updated Date July 20, 2024

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI EDI

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date July 20, 2024
Metadata Updated Date July 20, 2024
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
@Id http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/8e3b89e1413f79175b8086f86dfa29bf
Identifier USGS:5c9e37cce4b0b8a7f62f5b16
Data Last Modified 20240325
Category geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 010:12
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://datainventory.doi.gov/data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id c4f24599-b5f8-434b-9059-c160274b323b
Harvest Source Id 52bfcc16-6e15-478f-809a-b1bc76f1aeda
Harvest Source Title DOI EDI
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -103.6 West Decimal Degrees, all samples, 43.3 South Decimal Degrees, all samples, -103.4 East Decimal Degrees, all samples, 43.5 North Decimal Degrees, all samples
Publisher Hierarchy White House > U.S. Department of the Interior > U.S. Geological Survey
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash de74f07825ed02be0900d6ac791394f8fa6e6e680bb0ae53b8725717c8027230
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial

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