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Inferring Pleistocene forest cover from bat bones in Niah cave, Sarawak

This is a fascinating paper in which the presence of bones of forest-interior bat species (mainly small Hipposideros species) in the archaeological record of the Great Cave of Niah, Sarawak, is used to provide evidence for late Pleistocene closed-canopy forest cover in NW Borneo. Overall, bat bones from 7 families and 9 genera were recovered from 22 dated assemblages that formed a time series of 14 chronological intervals 48-0.35 ky BP.

Stimpson, C. M. (2012). Local scale, proxy evidence for the presence of closed canopy forest in North-western Borneo in the late Pleistocene: Bones of Strategy I bats from the archaeological record of the Great Cave of Niah, Sarawak. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 331–332 (2012) 136–149

The abstract is here but you will need to contact the author for a pdf cs474@cam.ac.uk