Gold Mining for Profit and Paleontology - Issue 50: Emergence
▻http://nautil.us/issue/50/emergence/gold-mining-for-profit-and-paleontology
Just outside Dawson City in northwest Canada, an unmarked gravel road branches from the main highway and snakes along Bonanza Creek—so named by the fortunes that were discovered in this remote outparcel. After a half-day drive the road loops back into the highway, circumscribing a lasso-shaped patch of land that has been divided, staked, and claimed by prospectors since the Klondike Gold Rush of 1896. Along with gold nuggets sleuthed from hillsides or sifted from streambeds, the land has yielded a bounty of ice-age fossils unintentionally excavated from the thawing permafrost. Unglaciated pockets of Yukon land have concentrated all manner of ice-age biodiversity. While miners dig for gold concentrated in white gravel layers, they move first through meters of ice-age sediment. This (...)