Royal Creek Sec. 7A, 155 m above base (Devonian of Canada)

Where: Yukon, Canada (64.8° N, 135.1° W: paleocoordinates 0.1° S, 41.7° W)

• coordinate stated in text

• local area-level geographic resolution

When: Upper Beds Member (Road River Formation), Pragian (410.8 - 407.6 Ma)

• Brachiopod biozone: Davidsoniatrypa johnsoni; Conodont biozone: Spathognathodus sulcatus; Graptolite biozone: Monograptus yukonensis.

• group of beds-level stratigraphic resolution

Environment/lithology: shallow subtidal; lithified carbonate and lithified shale

• During the Late Silurian and Early Devonian, the Royal Creek area lay at the margin of a deep-water embayment. The transition from shallow to deep water was relatively abrupt, with very thick shallow-water (including intertidal and shallow subtidal), sparsely fossiliferous carbonates accumulating on the large platform immediately to the east, southeast, and south of the study area, and deep-water, graptolite-rich shales and calcareous shales of the Road River Group accumulating in a northwest-facing trough that joined to the Blackstone River and Richardson troughs (Lenz, 1972 ; Norford, 1997 ). In the transitional zone, perhaps no more than one kilometer in width, brachiopods flourished, and trilobites, bryozoans, corals and gastropods were relatively common (Lenz, 1977a, 1977b, 1982 ). Sea-level fluctuations through this time period are evidenced in the area by tongues of the deeper water facies trangressing over the shallower-water carbonates, alternating with tongues of the latter facies prograding over deeper water facies. During times of shallow-water deposits prograding over deeper water facies, coupled with a relatively steep slope margin (still visible in a few localities), benthic organisms found themselves in a very unstable environment and, perhaps triggered by earth tremors, cascaded into deeper waters. As a result, the most richly fossiliferous carbonates are predominantly debris-flow deposits, in which shallower and deeper dwelling benthic faunas within any debris-flow bed are entirely intermixed.

Size class: macrofossils

Preservation: replaced with silica

Collection methods: bulk,

• Corals given in Jackson, Lenz & Pedder (1978) Geological Association of Canada, Spec. Publ. 17.

Primary reference: A. C. Lenz. 1982. New data on Late Silurian and Early Devonian brachiopods from the Royal Creek area, Yukon Territory. Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences 19:364-375 [M. Foote/M. Foote/M. Foote]more details

Purpose of describing collection: general faunal/floral analysis

PaleoDB collection 39397: authorized by Pete Wagner, entered by Kimberly Koverman on 27.05.2004, edited by Pete Wagner

Creative Commons license: CC BY (attribution)

Taxonomic list

Rhynchonellata
 Rhynchonellida - Machaerariidae
 Pentamerida - Gypidulidae
 Orthida - Schizophoriidae
Schizophoria sp. King 1850
 Orthida - Dalmanellidae
 Atrypida - Karpinskiidae
Rostroconchia
 Conocardiida -
Conocardioidea indet.2 Miller 1889
Gastropoda
 Euomphalina - Tubinidae
Semitubina yukonensis1 Blodgett et al. 2001 snail