Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T16:52:09.108Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Contrasting patterns of preservation in a Jamaican cave

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 March 2016

STEPHEN K. DONOVAN
STEPHEN K. DONOVAN*
Affiliation:
Naturalis Biodiversity Center, PO Box 9517, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands
*
†Author for correspondence: Steve.Donovan@naturalis.nl
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Red Hills Road Cave, Jamaica is a remnant of a karstic feature quarried away during road building. It is the most important site for Late Pleistocene terrestrial palaeontology on the island. The site is c. 30 ka old. Many taxa were washed in during hurricanes and tropical storms, either as dead carcasses or live organisms that drowned as the cave filled with water. The invertebrate fauna includes snails and arthropods; none are obligate cave dwellers. The 62 species of land snails are the most diverse of any Jamaican cave; operculate taxa may be preserved with the operculum in situ. Arthropods include the only fossil millipedes, isopods and insects (fly puparia, beetle elytra) in the Jamaican fossil record, in addition to land crabs. Millipedes and isopods are well preserved because of a diagenetically early coating of calcite cement. The exoskeletons of these groups contain a small, but significant, calcite component not found in insects, spiders and scorpions. The vertebrate fauna remains understudied, but include: a rodent and three species of bat; a flightless ibis and various other birds; and reptile and amphibian remains. In contrast to the arthropods, the vertebrates are invariably disarticulated apart from rare crania, jawbones retaining teeth and bones that are fused in life. A dead millipede could be coated in calcite when floating in the cave immediately after death; a dead vertebrate carcass would have to rot to expose its bones after the cave dried out and would, most likely, disarticulate before or during the next inundation.

Keywords

karsttaphonomygastropodsarthropodsvertebrates
Type
Original Articles
Information
Geological Magazine , Volume 154 , Issue 3 , May 2017 , pp. 516 - 520
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Atkinson, L.-G. (ed.) 2006. The Earliest Inhabitants: The Dynamics of the Jamaican Taíno. Mona: University of the West Indies Press, xvi+213 pp.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baalbergen, E. & Donovan, S. K. 2013. Terrestrial arthropods from the Late Pleistocene of Jamaica: systematics, palaeoecology and taphonomy. Geological Journal 48, 628–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boot, A., Donovan, S. K. & Meijer, H. J. M. 2015. Fossil birds of the Late Pleistocene Red Hills Road Cave, Jamaica: appraisal and biodiversity. Cave and Karst Science 42, 95–103.Google Scholar
Coates, A. G. 1977. Jamaican coral-rudist frameworks and their geological setting. In Reefs and Related Carbonates in Ecology and Sedimentology (eds Frost, S. H., Weiss, M. P. & Saunders, J. B.), pp. 83–91. American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Studies in Geology no. 4.Google Scholar
Collins, J. S. H., Mitchell, S. F. & Donovan, S. K. 2009. A new species of land crab, Sesarma Say, 1817 (Decapoda, Brachyura), from the Pleistocene of Jamaica. Scripta Geologica 138, 11–21.Google Scholar
Donovan, S. K. (ed.) 2004. The Mid-Cainozoic White Limestone Group of Jamaica. Cainozoic Research 3, 1–219.Google Scholar
Donovan, S. K., Baalbergen, E., Ouwendijk, M., Paul, C. R. C. & Hoek Ostende, L. W. van den. 2013. Review and prospectus of the Late Pleistocene fauna of the Red Hills Road Cave, Jamaica. Cave and Karst Science 40, 79–86.Google Scholar
Donovan, S. K. & Gordon, C. M. 1989. Report of a field meeting to selected localities in St Andrew and St Ann, 25 February 1989. Journal of the Geological Society of Jamaica 26, 51–4.Google Scholar
Donovan, S. K. & Paul, C. R. C. 2011. A diverse terrestrial fauna in the Pleistocene of Jamaica: the treasures of the Red Hills Road Cave. Geology Today 27, 173–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Donovan, S. K. & Veltkamp, C. J. 1994. Unusual preservation of late Quaternary millipedes from Jamaica. Lethaia 27, 355–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fincham, A. G. 1997. Jamaica Underground: The Caves, Sinkholes and Underground Rivers of the Island. Mona: University of the West Indies Press, xv+447 pp.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fraser, N. 1988. At the feet of the dinosaurs. New Scientist 120 (1633), 39–42.Google Scholar
Hopkin, S. P. & Read, H. J. 1992. The Biology of Millipedes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, xii+233 pp.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McFarlane, D. A. & Blake, J. 2005. The late Pleistocene hutias (Geocapromys brownii) of Red Hills Fissure, Jamaica. Geological Journal 40, 399–404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ouwendijk, M., Hoek Ostende, L. W. van den & Donovan, S. K. 2014. Fossil bats from the Late Pleistocene Red Hills Road Cave, Jamaica. Caribbean Journal of Science 47, 284–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paul, C. R. C. 1982. The Jamaican land snail genera Geoscala and Simplicervix (Pulmonata; Urocoptidae). Journal of Conchology, London 31, 101–27.Google Scholar
Paul, C. R. C. 1983. The comparative anatomy and systematics of Jamaican Urocoptidae (Mollusca: Pulmonata). Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 78, 1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paul, C. R. C. & Donovan, S. K. 2006. Quaternary and Recent land snails (Mollusca: Gastropoda) from Red Hills Road Cave, Jamaica. Bulletin of the Mizunami Fossil Museum 32, 109–44.Google Scholar
Robinson, E. 1988. Late Cretaceous and early Tertiary sedimentary rocks of the Central Inlier, Jamaica. Journal of the Geological Society of Jamaica 24, 49–67.Google Scholar
Robinson, E. 1994. Jamaica. In Caribbean Geology: An Introduction (eds Donovan, S. K. & Jackson, T. A.), 111–27. Mona: University of the West Indies Publishers’ Association.Google Scholar
Rosenberg, G. & Muratov, I. V. 2006. Status report on the terrestrial Mollusca of Jamaica. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 155, 117–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Savage, R. J. G. 1990. Preliminary report on the vertebrate fauna of the Red Hills Road cave, St. Andrew, Jamaica. Journal of the Geological Society of Jamaica 27, 33–5.Google Scholar
Simms, M. J. 1994. Emplacement and preservation of vertebrates in caves and fissures. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, London 112, 261–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, M. P., Drysdale, R. N. & Carthew, K. D. 2004. The formation and environmental significance of calcite rafts in tropical tufa-depositing rivers of northern Australia. Sedimentology 51, 1089–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar