NWT RESEARCH DATABASE

Principal Investigator: Fiess, Kathryn M
Licensed Year(s): 2014 2013
Summary: The objective of this project is to identify a vertebrate fossil of Carboniferous age recently found in the Golata Formation in the Liard Basin. The research group is studying outcrops of Devonian to Carboniferous age shale to establish the hydrocarbon resource potential for the NWT, BC, and Yukon regions of the Liard area. Scientific investigations include measuring rock outcrop sections and t...

Principal Investigator: Henderson, Donald M
Licensed Year(s): 2013
Summary: The objectives of this research project are to: 1) excavation of the body fossil(s) and their careful packaging for removal and travel; and 2) make latex rubber peels of the fossilized trackways left on a fine-grained limestone. If the quality of the tracks merits it, the rock slabs hosting the tracks may be removed for safe-keeping and public display. The fossil will be collected using standar...

Principal Investigator: Vavrek, Matthew J
Licensed Year(s): 2013
Summary: This project is a continuation of the collaborative research program on ancient biodiversity in the Canadian Arctic. Recently, the group completed work supported by Polar Continental Shelf Project in the Brackett Basin in the westcentral Northwest Territories and the Bonnet Plume Basin in northeastern the Yukon Territory, during which the research team recovered both new vertebrate (dinosaur) foss...

Principal Investigator: Narbonne, Guy
Licensed Year(s): 2013 2012
Summary: The world’s earliest animals appeared in the Ediacaran Period about 580 million years ago, and soft worm-like animals capable of movement appeared suddenly worldwide 555 million years ago. The previous studies (Narbonne and Aitken, Palaeontology, 1990; MacNaughton and Narbonne, Palaios, 1999; Narbonne, The Rise of Animals, 2007) have shown that these fossils are especially well represented in the ...

Principal Investigator: Gosse, John C
Licensed Year(s): 2013
Summary: The primary objectives are to i) collect fossils (i.e. peat, bone, wood, and other sedimentary proxies) for paleoenvironmental reconstructions and, ii) document the age of the Beaufort Formation (Fm) at Ballast Brook, northwest Banks Island using a new approach based on the exposure of quartz sand grains to cosmic radiation: terrestrial cosmogenic nuclide (TCN) burial dating. The cosmogenic nuclid...

Principal Investigator: Wilson, Mark V.H.
Licensed Year(s): 2013 1998 1996 1990
Summary: The 2 objectives of this research project are: 1) to recover some of the oldest-known body fossils of sharks and their relatives as well as other associated fossils. The anatomy of the fossil species will be described in detail and published in international journals. These fossils will allow identification of fragments of related species found at other sites worldwide, and will allow the researc...

Principal Investigator: Pratt, Brian R.
Licensed Year(s): 2012 2002 2000 1998
Summary: The principal investigator has been working off and on for many years on the stratigraphy and paleontology of Cambrian strata of the Mackenzie Mountains. This is a critical region of North America because the record of sedimentation on the flank of the continent as it was over half a billion years ago is particularly extensive with little interruption. At the section of interest the lower part of ...

Principal Investigator: Vavrek, Matthew J
Licensed Year(s): 2012
Summary: The research team will be prospecting for and collecting Cretaceous fossils from the Summit Creek Formation in order to better understand what terrestrial biodiversity was like at high latitudes at that time. This project is a continuation of the collaborative research program on ancient biodiversity in the Canadian Arctic. Recently, the research team completed work supported by Polar Continental ...

Principal Investigator: Schroder-Adams, Claudia J.
Licensed Year(s): 2012
Summary: The main objective of this research project is to improve the stratigraphic framework of the Cretaceous Western Interior Sea region and the understanding of the paleoenvironmental setting of a Cretaceous aged oceanographic gateway between the Boreal Sea and the Western Interior Sea that flooded large parts of North America. The proposed localities have the type section of the two targeted forma...

Principal Investigator: Osinski, Gordon
Licensed Year(s): 2015 2012
Summary: The objectives of this research are to: (1) Confirm of a meteorite impact origin for the Collinson Inlet structure. In order to confirm the meteorite impact origin of this structure, unequivocal shock metamorphic criteria need to be documented. Shatter cones are the only diagnostic shock effect visible to the naked eye (French and Koeberl 2010). The research team will seek out the potential s...