Join Jeff Mitton, Ph.D Biologist, to discover the critters building time capsules inside our canyon walls - packrats! This is a one-hour live webinar.
When: November 22nd from 5:30 - 6:30 PM
Where: Virtual - a link will be sent to you prior to the event
What: This presentation was inspired by Jeff's discovery of a packrat cave and midden at the precipitous edge of a dryfall above McDonald Canyon in the McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area.
Currently, four species of packrats occupy the Colorado Plateau, with the bushy-tailed packrat more common than the desert, whitethroat and Mexican packrats. Packrats are herbivores, eating a wide diversity of things, even conifer needles. At MCNCA they inhabit crevices and caves eroded by water in sandstone.
Packrats collect many pieces of plant materials from their territories, pile them in their cave, and urinate on them. Packrat urine indurates or hardens, encasing the entire collection into a glassy amber mass called amberat. Sealed from oxygen, water and movement, these materials may be nicely preserved for up to 50,000 years. Biologists can extract slivers from the midden, determine their age with carbon dating, and identify the plant materials to describe the plant community at a specific time and place in the past.
This event is free and open to the public.
About the speaker
Jeff Mitton was in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado for 44 years when he retired in 2018 to emeritus status. His work was on natural selection and gene flow in natural populations, including salamanders, bark beetles and forest trees. He writes a column entitled "Natural Selections" for the Boulder Daily Camera and illustrates each column with his photos.