The Man on the Hill (MOTH) locality of northwestern
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
has fossils that are very well preserved and have had a profound impact on the understanding of vertebrate evolution. The geology of the MOTH locality consists of fine, alternating laminae of light grey argillaceous limestone, or calcareous shale, and dark grey silt to sand-rich calcareous shale, as observed in thin section, and the characterization of the lithology for the vertebrate-bearing strata as an interlaminated argillaceous limestone and calcareous shale. The abundance of cryptic trace fossils and the presence of pyrite suggest that the intra-shelf topographic sag at MOTH had restricted circulation and was generally hypoxic (Zorn et al. 2005).
The MOTH locality (62°32' N, 127°45' W) is located in the Central Mackenzie Mountains, approximately 70 km northeast of
Tungsten, Northwest Territories
The townsite of Tungsten (shown as Cantung on some maps) is located at Cantung Mine in the Northwest Territories. It is accessible from Watson Lake, Yukon via the Nahanni Range Road
History
Tungsten was built in 1961 and the tungsten mine ...
, Canada (Hanke 2008). The MOTH locality was named after a pile of rocks resembling a human sitting on a ridge (Man-on-the-Hill) (Adrain & Wilson 1994). The locality is on the southwest limb of the Grizzly Bear anticline in rocks which are thought to be transitional between the Road River Formation and the Delorme Group (Adrain & Wilson 1994). Gabrielse et al. (1973) provided the original description of the structural geology, lithological features, and associated invertebrate and vertebrate fossils in the measured section at MOTH. The marine rocks preserved in the Mackenzie Mountains were deposited in spatially extensive sedimentary units, including the Whittaker, Delorme, and Road River formations (Perry 1984; Morrow & Geldsetzer 1988) that fringed the western margin of Laurussia (the combined Laurentian and Baltic regions) during the Late Silurian and Early Devonian (Copeland 1978; Chatterton & Perry 1983
[Chatterton B. D. E. & Perry D. G. 1983,Silicified Silurian odontopleurid trilobites from the Mackenzie Mountains. Palaeontographica Canadiana 1: 1-126.]).
References
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Fossils of Canada
Paleontology in the Northwest Territories