For late glacial-early Holocene sites, I always collect samples from any wood with beaver tooth-marks. So far, the wood has been from very small trees and branches, and used as an indicator of the presence of beavers and for species identification to find what species were used by the beavers, and help determine what species were present at the site at that time. In a few cases we 14C-date the wood to find if the beaver was present at the time of deposition of other wood at the site, for possible disturbance of the deposit.
To Alwynne - I know Dr. Butler and his publications, but I did not know about this. Thank you very much :)
To Carol - Yes, pieces of wood with beaver tooth-marks are often bad maintained and very small. My research indicate that beavers lived in Poland throughout the Holocene. I finish the examination of one place where I have wood with beaver tooth-marks. I haven't the results of radiocarbon dates but I think it will be a late Holocene.
Thank you very much :)
In my dendro. work in Natural Bridges National Monument, SE Utah, US, among 100s of samples and documentation of prehistoric structural wood used in the AD 1100s and AD 1200s Puebloan cliff structures there, I noted a single example of a beaver-cut end. Surprisingly, this is the only evidence of prehistoric beaver activity from dendrochronological work in the region that I am aware of. In fact, it is the only one that I have ever noted in the 1000s of beams that my wood team and I have documented in the Southwest, despite the special attention given to the type of beam-end treatment present. The Lab of Tree-ring Research in Tucson, AZ, may have had better luck.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Biological Science
- Histology
- Sectioning