Donald A. Mcfarlane

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at Claremont Colleges

Cave guano deposits are increasingly being recognized as valuable repositories of paleo-climatic and paleo-environmental information. However, that value is constrained by rates of guano decomposition, and these rates have not been previously well-studied. Here we show that field and laboratory studies of deep insectivorous bat guano sequences in t...

We report the first record of the Eulipotyphlid insectivore, Echinosorex gymnura, from a subterranean context. In 2018, two individuals of the species were observed in Deer Cave, Gunung Mulu National Park, Sarawak. During 2020-2021, the species was documented on 19 separate occasions by automated camera traps. The repeated presence of this small ve...

A better understanding of the role of bat caves as nitrogen sinks in tropical moist forest ecosystems can be expected to shed light on regional and spatial variability in nutrient recycling studies. We measured the nitrogen flux (in air and water) associated with a very large Chaerephon plicata bat colony in Deer Cave, Borneo, in the process genera...

Double cosmogenic dating of fossil bat guano deposits beyond the radiocarbon limit.

Some recent publications on the paleo- and historical environmental interpretation of bat guano sequences have relied on ²¹⁰ Pb and ¹³⁷ Cs distribution to establish age-depth models, even when these are at odds with radiocarbon models in the lower parts of the sequence. Here, we present both field and laboratory evidence for the unpredictable mobil...

Here we addressed the question of whether burning of guano produces a characteristic suite of morphological changes and/or unique mineralogical products. The changes observed in our experimental burning of guano (both fresh and decayed) included colour change (blackening), grain size and morphological change (grain size generally reduced, morpholog...

The migration of vegetation under the influence of climate change is of great interest to ecologists, but can be difficult to quantify—especially in less accessible landscapes. Monitoring land cover change through remote sensing has become the best solution, especially with the use of unmanned aerial systems (UASs; drones) as low-cost remote sensin...

Natural caves that emit geogenic CO2 appear to be very rare; here we report CO2 measurements from Cueva de la Muerte, Costa Rica, a natural cave developed in recent volcanic rocks. The CO2 is strongly stratified, emerging from the cave in a density flow that hugs the ground. The total CO export from the Cueva de la Muerte is significant, estimated...

Seven silica biospeleothems from Cueva Charles Brewer, Chimantá Plateau, Venezuela have been successfully U-Th dated despite very low U and high detrital Th concentrations. Growth rates are low, between ~100 to ~800 µm/ka, and are greater closer to water level. Dates in unaltered material are in good stratigraphic order, but secondary silicificatio...

Recent studies of ancient bat guano deposits in the caves of Gunung Mulu National Park and Niah National Park, Sarawak, Malaysia, have resulted in noteworthy records of phosphate minerals from these environments, including variscite, nano-particulate silica, fluorapatite, and niter.

An unusual form of gypsum is reported from Deer Cave, Gunung Mulu National Park, Sarawak, Malaysia. The gypsum is originally derived from decomposing bat guano, is air-dispersed, dissolved in condensation water entrained in spiders' webs, and then recrystallized on the spider silk matrix.

Terrestrial LIDAR (T-Lidar, or 3-D) scanning gives outstanding detail in cave surveying, generating extremely large datasets of dense point clouds, resulting in very detailed and precise 3D models of the scanned caves. These models are commonly used to determine the volume of chambers. Intuition tells us that the denser the point cloud, the better...

A previously unrecognized aspect of nitrogen biogeochemistry in tropical moist forests (TMF) relates to the spatial biogeochemistry of these systems. In general, high levels of herbivory in TMF's transfer large amounts of fixed nitrogen and other nutrients into the insect community, which itself is harvested by aerial insectivorous vertebrates (bat...

Increasingly, speleologists are employing terrestrial laser scanners to generate highly detailed 3D maps of caves, which can be used for quantitative analysis and comparison. Although their high precision allows very accurate volume computations, one of the key aspects of cave mapping – the identification of chambers for volumetric comparisons – st...

Gomantong Caves, occupying much of the isolated karst tower of Gomantong Hill, Sabah, Borneo, are relict phreatic caves (now famous for their huge populations of bats and swiftlets), with no evidence of any vadose phase. Here we explore the speleogenesis by analysing the phreatic scallop remnants to determine former flow direction and thus hydrauli...

During a 24-day T-Lidar scanning project of the Gomantong Caves in Sabah, Malaysia (some 4 km of often very physically-demanding passage), we collected 271 scans, resulting in a massive data set of 12.6 billion scan points. In hindsight, we can now offer some new protocols that should enhance future field work and subsequent data processing. The ma...

A novel aquatic drone ventured into highly acidic waters to test the feasibility of remotely exploring and surveying hazardous volcanic lakes.

Four new saber-tooth cat (Homotherium) sites in Germany with new dental and postcranial bone material are different in their taphonomic context: 1. The Archaeological Middle Palaeolithic (MIS 9e-Interglacial) Schöningen Lake site with remains of a cub carcass, 2. The Middle Palaeolithic (MIS 5e-9) Archaeological/cave bear den site of Balve Cave yie...

The use of the Landsat constellation to quantify historic deforestation and reforestation over time is well established. This analysis, however, requires ground-referenced data that is often inaccessible in remote areas or expensive if no existing high-resolution satellite imagery exists. In response, we evaluate the capability of unmanned aerial v...

The extinct fauna of Dream Cave, Derbyshire, has played a significant role in the history of British cave palaeontology, a near-complete woolly rhinoceros from the cave having been famously illustrated in 1823. The fauna was not subsequently re-studied until 2000, with the publication of an indirect radiometric date by uranium-series disequilibrium...

Significant impacts on cave microclimate from large populations of the bat Rousettus aegyptiacus have been documented in three simple caves in pyroclastic rock of Mount Elgon National Park, Kenya, one of which, Kitum Cave, with few bats, acts as a control, indicating microclimatic variations in the absence of significant biological activity. Seven...

The Gomantong cave system, Kinabatangan, Sabah (Malaysia) hosts one of the largest bat colonies known from north Borneo. The nightly exodus of Chaerophon plicatus from this site is an economically valuable tourist attraction, and must impose significant controls on the regional ecology. Monitoring ecosystem health requires monitoring bat population...

High resolution terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) within the Simud Hitam Cave, Gomantong, has proven successful at discriminating the nests of black-nest swiftlets from roosting bats in high, inaccessible locations. TLS data were imported into ArcGIS software, allowing for semi-automated counting of nests based on resolved geometry and laser return...

Cordimus, a new genus of cricetid rodent, is described from Neogene deposits on the islands of Curaçao and Bonaire, Dutch Antilles. The genus is characterized by strongly cuspidate molars, the presence of mesolophs in most upper molars and the absence of mesolophids in lower molars. Similarities with the early cricetid Copemys from the Miocene of N...

The laser ablation ICP–MS transect of a speleothem from GB Cave, close to Charterhouse, Mendip Hills, UK, records Pb variations over the past 5 ka. The speleothem record correlates well with the known historical record of lead mining in the district, the principal features of which include: the Roman lead mining peak; the Dark Ages cessation; gradu...

The extinct Pleistocene giant rodent Amblyrhiza inundata is reported here for the first time from the island of St Barthélemy. Bracketing uranium-thorium dates provide an age of ~ 500 ka for the specimens, making these the oldest known examples from any of the islands of the Anguilla bank. As with con-familial heptaxontids on Jamaica, and probably...

The potential for finding Quaternary tetrapod fossils on islands is governed by a combination of biodiversity, geology, fossil preservation, and time span of records. Islands with extensive limestone exposures are particularly well represented at low and middle latitudes, where biodiversity is potentially high, and the caves and karst fissures in t...

Several caves in Devon, England, have been noted for extensive cracking of substantial flowstone floors. Conjectural explanations have included earthquake damage, local shock damage from collapsing cave passages, hydraulic pressure, and cryogenic processes. Here we present a theoretical model to demonstrate that frost-heaving and fracture of flowst...

The Gomantong cave system of eastern Sabah, Malaysia, is well-known as an important site for harvesting edible bird-nests and, more recently, as a tourist attraction. Although the biology of the Gomantong system has been repeatedly studied, very little attention has been given to the geomorphology. Here, we report on the impact of geobiological mod...

A distinctive white sediment in the caves of Mulu, Sarawak, Borneo is a well-preserved tephra, representing a fluvially transported surface air-fall deposit, re-deposited inside the caves. We show that the tephra is not the Younger Toba Tephra, formerly considered as most likely. The shards are rod-shaped with elongate tubular vesicles; the largest...

The ‘breccia’ stratum from Kents (we follow local tradition in using the form ‘Kents’, without an apostrophe) Cavern, England, has been well known for its rich yield of cave-bear material since excavations began in the mid-19th century. Recent work has established that the bears are of latest MIS 12 or earliest MIS 11 age. A life table based on a c...

A suite of distinctive freshwater subaerial phosphatic stromatolites is developed close to the northeastern entrance of Deer Cave, Gunung Mulu National Park, Sarawak, Borneo, in conditions of very low light but ample supply of nutrients from guano. These stromatolites are not particulate; they are composed of alternating layers of more porous and m...

Crayback stalagmites have mainly been reported from New South Wales, Australia. Here we document a small crayback in the entrance of Painted Cave (Kain Hitam), part of the Niah Caves complex in Sarawak, Borneo. Measuring some 65 cm in length and 18 cm in height, this deposit is elongate in the direction of the dominant wind and thus oriented toward...

Tens of thousands of palaeontological and archaeological remains were collected by William Pengelly during 19th century excavations of Kents Cavern, but are now widely dispersed between museums. This has previously precluded spatial analysis. We have now assembled available museum records into a single database, and, using our previously-reconstruc...

A distinctive suite of small-scale erosional forms that are oriented towards the light occur close to the entrance of Cueva Charles Brewer, a large cave in a sandstone tepui, in SE Venezuela. These are the third example of photokarren ever studied in the world, the other two being from Borneo and Ireland. They are the only photokarren ever describe...

We investigated the utility of subfossil bat guano as a paleoenvironmental archive by comparing elemental ratios and delta(13)C, delta(15)N, and delta D values of various simple extracts from bulk material. Solvent-extracted guano yielded consistent C:N and N:H ratios, and delta(13)C values of solvent-extracted guano exhibited strong covariation wi...

Recent explorations in Cueva Charles Brewer, a large cave in a sandstone tepui, SE Venezuela, have revealed silica biospeleothems of unprecedented size and diversity. Study of one — a sub-spherical mass of opaline silica — reveals a complex, laminated internal structure consisting of three narrow dark bands alternating with two wider light bands. U...

The microclimatic effect of bats roosting in bell holes (blind vertical cylindrical cavities in cave roofs) in Runaway Bay Caves, Jamaica, was measured and the potential impact of their metabolism on dissolution modelled. Rock temperature measurements showed that bell holes with bats get significantly hotter than those without bats during bat roost...

High-resolution topographic mapping of the Firestone Reserve, southwestern Costa Rica, has pre- sented a number of challenges resulting from the poor-to-non-existent GPS satellite reception in steep canyons and under tropical rainforest canopy. We have successfully employed magnetic survey tech- niques and data reduction software developed for cave...

We inferred climate change through the Pleistocene-Holocenetransition from 13C and D values of bat guano deposited from14.5 to 6.5 ka (calendar ka) in Bat Cave, Grand Canyon, Arizona.The 13C and D values generally covaried, indicating that regionallate Pleistocene climate was relatively cool and wet, and earlyHolocene climate gradually became warme...

The significance of the stratigraphic record in Kents Cavern, Devon, United Kingdom, to the interpretation of the British Quaternary is confirmed on the basis of a thorough reexamination of the deposits in concert with 2 new Al-Be cosmogenic and 34 new thermal ionization mass spectrometry U-Th dates. The deposits show evidence of complex reworking...

Stable isotopes of faeces contain information related to the animals feeding ecology. The use of stable isotope values from subfossil faeces as a palaeoenvironmental indicator depends on how faithfully the animal records their local environment. Here we present insectivorous bat guano δ13C and δ15N values from a precipitation gradient across the so...

A range extension for Hahn's short-tailed fruit bat, Carollia subrufa, is reported which extends the distribution of the species from the Pacific Dry Forest into the Pacific Moist Forest ecoregion. This raises the possibility that the species may be more widely distributed in Costa Rica than currently supposed, adding almost 30,000 km 2 of potentia...

1. ABSTRACT Recent efforts to extend the terrestrial vertebrate record of the West Indies have resulted in the discovery of distinctive last-interglacial (Sangamonian) cave deposits on the islands of Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, and Anguilla. Each of these deposits apparently represents debris (including vertebrate bone) emplaced by catastroph...

Cow Cave is a well-known archaeological and palaeontological site in the wall of Chudleigh Gorge, Devon, England. The cave is choked after a short distance with allochthonous sediments and speleothem accumulations. Palaeontological excavations at the cave in 1927 to 1935, and again in 1962 to 1963, yielded a rich Pleistocene fauna and several stone...

Slaughter Canyon Cave (or New Cave), Carlsbad Caverns National Park, southeastern New Mexico, opens in the wall of Slaughter Canyon, 174 m above the present level of the canyon floor. It contains bone-bearing, water-laid sediments capped by a double layer of calcite. TIMS U-Th dates on the two layers are 66.0 ± 0.3 ka and 209 ±9 ka. Deposition of t...

The eastern flanks of Mount Elgon, an early Miocene stratovolcano, host caves (̃150 m long, ̃60 m wide, ̃10 m high) of debatable origin. Many animals, primarily elephants, "mine" the pyroclastic bedrock for sodium-rich salts. Speleogenesis has been argued to be primarily zoogeomorphic, or primarily dissolutional with only minor zoogeomorphic modifi...

Red Hills Fissure (RHF) is an in-filled, karstic solutional feature exposed by a roadcut in southern Jamaica. The site was discovered in 1988 and immediately recognized as an unusually rich source of late Quaternary gastropods and vertebrate bone dating from the late Pleistocene. Recent work on RHF has focused on the abundant remains of the endemic...

Between 1858 and 1880, William Pengelly developed revolutionary new techniques for the archeological and paleontological excavation of cave deposits. His work at Brixham Cave and Kent's Cavern, England, yielded tens of thousands of specimens from the mid-Pleistocene to the Holocene, settled the intellectual debate over the co-existence of humans an...

A new type of lava cave is described from the summit crater of Ol Doinyo Lengai, a unique active carbonatite volcano in Tanzania. This and other similar caves on Ol Doinyo Lengai are formed by thermal erosion and aqueous dissolution of otherwise solid spatter cones. Meteoritic water and endogeneous condensates act to form speleothems of complex min...

La región de roca caliza de Puerto Rico cubre aproximadamente el 27.5 por ciento de la superficie de la Isla y se subdivide entre la zona caliza del Norte, la zona caliza del Sur y la caliza dispersa. Todas las zonas calizas tienen características de karso1. Los términos técnicos que aparecen en letra negrita en este informe se definen en la secció...

Early (pre-radiometric-dating) measures of growth rates of the Jockey Cap stalagmite, Ingleborough Cave, Yorkshire have been augmented by recent laser range-finder measurements. This yields a growth rate of 0.147mm/yr. Propagation of this rate yields a basal date of 4469 yr BP. C-14 dating gives a basal age (after correction for dead carbon content...

An international team of four speleologists located and investigated eight caves during July of 2001, in the province of Chiriquí, Panama. Cueva en el Cerro Punta was shown to be the highest known cave in Panama at 2,174 meters elevation above mean sea level, although only 43 meters long. Cueva de Portón becomes the second longest surveyed cave in...

Studies of an unusual and diverse system of caves in coastal southern Jamaica have yielded a paleoclimatic record associated with a fossil vertebrate record that provides useful insights into the poorly documented paleoecology of latest Wisconsinan and Holocene Jamaica. Episodes of significantly increased precipitation during the Holocene have left...

The extinct oryzomyine rodent Megalomys curazensis has been known from abundant but fragmentary remains on the island of Curaçao since 1959. Here we demonstrate an age of 130 000 to 400 000 years before present based on geomorphological context, and propose a biogeographical model for the genus.

An unusually well preserved skull, mandible, and indisputably associated post-cranial elements of new sloth, Acratocnus (Miocnus), were recovered from a cave in Jaragua National Park, Dominican Republic. The animal died lying in a rimstone pool and was rapidly coated with a thin calcite patina. We have documented a late Wisconsinan age for this spe...

The limestone region of Puerto Rico covers about 27.5 percent of the island's surface and is subdivided into the northern, southern, and dispersed limestone areas. All limestone areas have karst features. The karst belt is that part of the northern limestone with the most spectacular surficial karst landforms. It covers 142,544 ha or 65 percent of...

An extinct new species of Oryzomyine rodent, known since 1936 from the cave of Grot van Hato on the island of Curaçao, is described from abundant new specimens collected from owl-pellet deposits at three localities on the island.

The Dream Cave woolly rhinoceros, Coelodonta antiquitatis, is a "classic" specimen of a "cold-stage" fossil fauna from central England. The find was illustrated and described by Dean William Buckland in his seminal tome Reliquiae Diluvianae (1823) during the first half of the 19th century, and made a significant contribution to the development of B...

Puerto Rico supported at least five genera of endemic terrestrial mammals in the late Quaternary, all of which are extinct. Whether these animals died out in the late Pleistocene, the mid-Holocene, or in post-Columbian time has not been established. This paper is the first attempt at radiometrically dating the 'last occurrences' of these taxa, toge...

The island-shrew, Nesophontes edithae Anthony 1916, Mean is the only Puerto Rican representative of the monogeneric family Nesophontidae.

Much effort has been directed toward determining the extinction dates of late Quaternary megafaunal mammals, usually in the context of testing models of anthropogenic “overkill” or terminal Pleistocene climatic change. These studies have typically relied on searching for the youngest reliable date (e.g., Long and Martin, 1974), or on matching the m...

The megafaunal rodentAmblyrhiza inundatafrom Anguilla and St. Martin is often cited in lists of late Quaternary human-induced extinctions, but its date of disappearance has never been established. Here, we present a suite of uranium-series disequilibrium dates from three independentAmblyrhizasites in Anguilla, all of which cluster in marine isotope...

Clidomys is the most distinctive but least well known member of the late Quaternary terrestrial mammal fauna of Jamaica. Here we report the second dated locality for this genus. The Illinoisan age we report further strengthens arguments we have made elsewhere, that Clidomys represents an early - probably pre-Wisconsinan - extinction that contrasts...

The Kirkdale Cave palaeofauna represents the original and classic 'warm', interglacial mammalian cave deposit in Britain. Although long considered to be 'Ipswichian' in age, no previous attempts to obtain radiometric dates have been recorded. Here we report a uranium-series disequilibrium date of 121 000 ± 4000 yr BP on a flowstone capping that ove...

Direct measurements of gaseous ammonia in the atmosphere of a dry bat cave containing several million insectivorous bats revealed a peak concentration of 1779 ppm (0.96 mg/dm3). Observations indicate that the origin of the gaseous ammonia is rapid microbial decomposition of bat urea, not chitinous guano. Modelling of ammonia distribution and diffus...

Plant and vertebrate macrofossils in an early Holocene fossil packrat (Neotoma sp.) midden with a radiocarbon age of 8640 ± 100 14 C yr B.P. are reported from the Chocolate Mountains, near the Salton Sea, Riverside County, California. An inventory of the midden has permitted a comparison of the modern flora and fauna of the site with that extant du...

We conducted a 7-month behavioural study of a captive colony of vampire bats and documented that reciprocal altruism between adult males of low relatedness did occur, was relatively common, and was associated with a very low-intensity, non-linear dominance relationship between males. The experimental group consisted of two male and four female adul...

Rodent species typically evolve larger mean body sizes when isolated on islands, but the extinct caviomorph Amblyrhiza inundata, known only from Quaternary cave deposits on the islands of Anguilla and St. Martin (northern Lesser Antilles), provides an unusually dramatic example of insular gigantism. Here we report on a series of body mass estimates...

Recorded interest in the caves of Anguilla dates back to the second half of the nineteenth century. The earliest explorations were concerned with the locating phosphatic cave earths, and resulted in the mining of several sites. Incidental to this work, the bones of the largest island rodent ever discovered were collected from Aguillan caves. Wherea...

Nitrogen and carbon isotope ratios were studied in a stratified deposit of guano of Mexican Free-tailed bats in Eagle Creek Cave, Arizona, U.S.A. Little diagenetic change was observed over the 25-year time span of the guano deposit. High aridity and reduced circulation of air in the cave are hypothesized to have slowed the normally rapid decomposit...

Carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios were measured for various ecogeochemical samples relevant to bat guano ecosystems. In particular, ca. 800-year-old subfossil guano from Jackson's Bay Cave Compex, Jamaica, yielded ratios similar to the modern guano from other Jamaican bat caves but quite different from modern guano of the same area. Diagenetic cha...

The ratio of the number of species to the number of genera in an island community has long been recognised as a potential proxy indicator of competitive interaction. An analysis of this relationship in the bat fauna of the Antillean archipelago demonstrates that the observed species-genus ratios are significantly depressed below null-model expectat...

The vertebrate fauna recovered from indurated conglomerates at Wallingford Roadside Cave (central Jamaica) is shown to be in excess of 100,000 yr old according to uranium series and electron spin resonance dating. The Wallingford local fauna is therefore pre-Wisconsinan in age, and Roadside Cave is now the oldest radiometrically dated locality in t...

The Antillean bat fauna is marked by a pattern of high species co-occurrence, with endemics dominating in the N Antilles and undifferentiated South American taxa dominating in the S Antilles. -from Author

A collection of common barn-owl (Tyto alba Scopoli) pellets from caves on the Portland Ridge of Jamaica reveals that whereas introduced rodents constitute approximately 90% of the total prey, bats and birds are also frequent prey items. Of the bats, frugivorous species predominate with Ariteus flavescens Gray and Artibeus jamaicensis Leach accounti...

The island of Anguilla, British West Indies, is the type locality for a giant extinct rodent described in the late 19th Century. Few additional specimens have come to light in this century, and the original localities are very imperfectly known. This paper summaries knowledge of the Quaternary bone caves of the island in the light of fieldwork cond...

Jamaica has 22 native mammal species. One of these is an endangered rodent, the Jamaican hutia Geocapromys browni; the rest are all bats. Fifteen of these bats depend entirely or significantly on caves as roost sites, including two endemic species and seven endemic subspecies. These cave-dwelling bats often form large colonies whose guano deposits...

A group of caves associated with the sink of the One Eye River in St. Elizabeth Parish, Jamaica, have been the subject of numerous important palaeontological investigations beginning 1919. Unfortunately, considerable confusion has arisen in the literature through inadequate documentation of different sites. The caves of the immediate area are descr...

Original survey data sheets and sketches from the 1977 'Liverpool University Potholing Club Expedition to Jamaica' survey of Still Waters Cave, St. Elizabeth Parish, Jamaica.

During summer 1977, five members of the Liverpool University Potholing Club spent six weeks working and exploring in the caves of Jamaica. The team consisted of Don McFarlane, John Dye, Malcolm Macduff, Mike Roger and Barry Williams, all of whom contributed to this report. The expedition base was at Troy, where the villagers are owed a debt of grat...

Amphibians represent a "canary in the coal mine," as such the diversity and abundance of amphibians is a good assessment of ecosystem health. Pitzer College's Firestone Center for Restoration Ecology (FCRE) in Barú, Costa Rica, contains mostly recovering rainforest. To monitor its recovery progress, the anuran diversity and density was investigated...

The global decline of amphibian populations has created a high demand for effective tools to measure how species respond to environmental change. We investigated the effectiveness of the Hayne Estimator for evaluating the population densities of Dendrobates granuliferus and Dendrobates auratus. We observed frogs in three Costa Rican lowland forest...