The Scholarly Activity Grant (SAG) fund is an internal Yukon University funding program designed to support research and scholarly activities undertaken by YukonU faculty, staff, and students to help foster research and scholarship in the organisation. For more information and eligibility criteria and submission calls please visit the SAG website.
Cambrian Microfossil Analysis of the Tonto Group, Grand Canyon, southwestern USA
Grant Year: 2023-2024
The Cambrian Tonto Group succession in the Grand Canyon, southwest USA, is currently under renewed geologic and palaeontologic scrutiny to assess and interpret the timing and speed of important events in the early history of life on Earth and the evolution of the North American continent more than half a billion years ago. Within a collaborative team of experts from the USA and Canada, this National Science Foundation funded project includes sub-projects ranging from detrital zircon and geochemical analyses to trilobite and microfossil biostratigraphy. Faculty and students from Yukon University with collaborators at the University of Calgary and Denver Museum of Nature and Science are investigating the occurrence and significance of microfossil remains of life from the Cambrian ~500 million years ago. These small shelly fossils (SSFs) found within layers of the Tonto Group provide useful clues aiding interpretation of the age and past environments of this sequence. The results of this study will help inform interpretation not only for the Tonto Group but also allow for correlation and interpretation of similar deposits found along the entire western margin of North America, from Mexico to the Yukon, Northwest Territories, and even Alaska. Yukon University involvement in this project will allow student involvement in original research working to unlock some of the outstanding questions related to the evolutionary explosion of complex life on our planet half a billion years ago.
Project Team
Sheilany Bouchard (Yukon University Student Researcher)
Dr. Charles Henderson (University of Calgary)
Dr. Chad Morgan (Yukon University)
Sedimentary Core Acquisition for Earth Science lab
Grant Year: 2024-2025
Subsurface core of sedimentary rock form an important dataset in sedimentary geology and palaeontology. These materials allow geoscientists to examine the physical rock record deep underfoot to test hypotheses and make interpretations about past processes. Subsurface core while extremely useful in sedimentologic and stratigraphic research are very expensive to acquire and are usually only produced by industrial partners. A small collection of cores from the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) which underlies the prairie provinces, and originally donated to the University of Calgary, have been provided to Yukon University to develop new lab exercises and experiential student projects in the earth science program. Subsurface drill core as a physical record contains stratigraphic data which can reveal changes in sea-level and palaeoenvironments millions of years ago. Learning to examine core and extract this data will allow students to engage with important concepts in geology and palaeontology including, climate change through time, faunal evolution and extinction, and changes in depositional patterns in the rock record. The use of real subsurface core will provide students with hands-on learning through observation of a real-world record of the past that they can use to build interpretations and test their ideas.