The Hamilton Bar Fauna: evidence for a Hypsithermal age

Abstract

Bones of small vertebrates (mammals, birds, snakes, fish, amphibians) have been recovered from time to time from sites in postglacial sediments at Hamilton, Ontario, for over a century. One of these sites, at Westdale Ravine, was previously assigned a Glacial Lake Iroquois age (ca. 12 000 years BP), but is now considered compatible with environments during or since the Hypsithermal (last 5000 years). A corrected radiocarbon date of 4330 ± 210 years BP confirms such an age and indicates that the bones are younger than and intrusive within the Glacial Lake Iroquois sediments in which they were found.