The Cretaceous age of the Vinegar Hill silica sand deposit, southern New Brunswick: evidence from palynology and paleobotany
Bibliographic record
Abstract
A small outcrop of quartz (silica) sand has been recognized at Vinegar Hill, near Cassidy Lake south of Sussex, New Brunswick, since the 1980s and extracted for commercial purposes. The deposit overlies Carboniferous rocks and underlies glacial deposits, and its setting is very similar to comparable, confirmed Cretaceous deposits in Nova Scotia. The age of the Vinegar Hill deposit, which appears to be of fluvial origin, has been unconfirmed until the present study. In this study, a general Mesozoic-early Tertiary age is indicated by the identity of a fossil araucarian wood specimen that occurs within the sand, and palynomorphs suggest a late Early Cretaceous, probably Albian, age. The absence of true growth rings in the wood implies a humid subtropical climate characterized by high temperatures, a conclusion consistent with a Cretaceous age because such climates are predicted for that age in the region by global paleoclimate reconstructions. The Vinegar Hill deposit represents the only known outcrop of Cretaceous strata in New Brunswick, but given its economic and scientific interest, a search for similar basins in the province would be worthwhile. RÉSUMÉ Un petit affleurement de sable quartzeux (silice) a été repéré sur la colline Vinegar, près du lac Cassidy, au sud de Sussex, Nouveau-Brunswick, au cours des années 80 et il a fait l'objet d'extraction à des fins commerciales. Le gîte recouvre des roches du Carbonifère et se trouve sous des dépôts glaciaires, dans un cadre semblable aux gîtes crétacés confirmés comparables de la Nouvelle-Écosse. L'âge du gîte de la colline Vinegar, qui semble d'origine fluviatile, n'avait pas été confirmé avant la présente étude. L'étude le situe d'une façon générale au Mésozoïque-Tertiaire inférieur en s'appuyant sur l'identité d'un spécimen de bois araucarien fossile présent à l'intérieur du sable; les palynomorphes laissent supposer qu'il remonterait à la fin du Crétacé inférieur, probablement l'Albien. L'absence de cernes réels dans le bois permet de supposer un climat subtropical humide caractérisé par des températures élevées, une conclusion qui est compatible avec un âge le situant au Crétacé parce qu'on peut déterminer la présence de tels climats dans la région à cette époque au moyen de reconstructions paléoclimatiques planétaires. Le gîte de la colline Vinegar représente le seul affleurement connu de strates du Crétacé au Nouveau-Brunswick, mais vu son intérêt économique et scientifique, il serait intéressant de rechercher des bassins semblables dans la province.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".