As dawn breaks, a Cantor’s Roundleaf bat flies through the lush rainforest canopy searching out its colony. Its home is the Great Cave of Niah, Sarawak, in northern Borneo, where it accompanies tens of thousands of other bats, careening through the cave after a night’s work hunting insects. It’s a scene that has probably been replicated daily for tens of thousands of years.
Evidence for the longevity of bat colonisation of the cave has been revealed through analysis of some 12,000 bat bones, as well as 1,400 bird bones, uncovered by archaeologists digging in Hell Trench at the West Mouth of the cave, and examined and dated by Cambridge zooarchaeologist Dr Chris Stimpson. His recently completed study, which was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, suggests that bats have been living there for 50,000 years.
Image: Ancient bat bones Credit: Chris Stimpson
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge