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Brief statement of problem and remarks (from collector):
The Dick Slough lignite deposit (south of Elephant Point on shore of Eschscholtz Bay, Selawik A-5 quad.) is one of a number of small, poorly exposed lignite deposits of uncertain age found along the east base of Seward Peninsula from Escholtz Bay to Norton Bay. Other deposits are known at Reindeed Creek and Chicago Creek in the Kugruk River drainage basin and at several points in the lower valley of the Koyuk River. The deposits lie just west of the great Cretaceous Koyukuk geosyncline and are suspected to be marginal continental deposits of Albian age, by analogy with deposits known along the eastern marginof the geosyncline. There is a good alternate possibility, however, that they are of lower Tertiary or possibly even middle Tertiary age.
The Dick Slough deposits were reported by Quackenbush in 1909, and we made a special effort to relocate and collect the outcrop. The lignite is contorted, possibly by frost action, and crops out on the tide flats below high tide. Adjoining bluffs expose a white silt or clay that appears to differ in its physical character from the late Pleistocene loess and fluvatile silt that elsewhere composes the bluff. Mixed in the clay is andesite of probable late Jurassic or early Cretaceous age, exposed in the hills to the south and southwest of Escholz Bay. Quackenbush believed and we believe that the white clay covers the lignite, though exposures are too poor to be certain. The relationship to the andesite is unknown; the fragments in the outcrop may have been transported a considerable distance by Pleistocene and Recent solifluction.
These specimens are probably of the same age as species 64APa41b, c, and d; and 61APa42a and 61APa44, collected by W.W. Patton and me [Don Hopkins speaking] at Reindeer Creek and Chicago Creek. However, chances of contamination are minimalized for specimen 61APa118a because it was collected from solid outcrop and immediately placed in a plastic bag.
A complete and care examination of the pollen for all of these specimens is ultimately desirable. More immediately, if it is possible to determine on the basis of any one of these specimens whether it represents a deposit of Cretaceous or of Tertiary age without attempting a more refined age determination, the decision would be of vital importance in working out the history of the region and would play an important role in a report that Patton now has in progress.