SCIP

Site Name: 
Sugar Creek
State: 
Location: 
Springfield
County: 
Logan
Periods: 
Deposits: 
Elevation: 
189.00m
Date Ranges (Cal yr 2σ): 
End: 
3 800 BP
Start: 
4 000 BP
End: 
3 000 BP
Start: 
3 200 BP
End: 
1 720 BP
Start: 
1 400 BP
Site Notes: 
  •  Mammoth site of Two Creekan age, Older Dryas 
  • Late Holocene riparian forest

We collected nearly 30 specimens of angiosperms along the banks of Sugar Creek in 2011 at a location that was first spotted by Dennis Campbell of Lincoln College, IL. Denis had been scouting the site for a number of years and collecting mammoth bones scattered in a silty diamacton full of wood and nuts. Radiocarbon dating of mammoth bone collagen designates the mammoth deposition ca. 13,500-13,700 Cal Yrs BP. The wood sitting on the top of sediments rich with the bones was dated to three intervals: 3860-3930 Cal Yrs BP (white oak group), 3140-3200 Cal Yrs BP (maple) and 1650-1590 Cal Yrs BP (sycamore and maple). The Late Holocene wood collection has high diversity of broad-leaf deciduous species that includes walnut, white oak, mulberry, ash, beech, sycamore, elm and maple. The wood had poor preservation and most of the outer rings were badly disintegrated. Overall, the collected specimens were fast-growing young trees in the age range of 15 years and 77 years. Only one specimen of a hickory tree had 136 rings, but we do not have a calendar age of this particular specimen.

Sugar Creek view near the wood deposition site.
Sampling wood exposed along the riverbank.
Typical example of wood specimen flattened under the weight of fluvial coarse sediments.