Cave Fieldwork in Cuba: 2002 - 2004

The early years of the new millennium were very productive for my research in Cuba. Our explorations, between 1995 and 2002, turned up very interesting fossils, representing rare and extinct faunas. The fruits of these explorations included two new records for Cuba, pertaining to two of the Caribbean's rarest fossil bats: the common vampire bat Desmodus rotundus and Peter's ghost-faced bat Mormoops megalophylla (articles can be downloaded here).

Fig. 1: An articulated skeleton of Mormoops blainvillei at Cueva de la Pluma (Cave of the Feather) in northern Matanzas, Cuba. This species is almost identical but smaller, than Mormoops megalophylla of the continent.

Our fieldwork began in the foothills of the Alturas Habana-Matanzas, a chain of lowland limestone hills that run W to E on the northern coast of Cuba. Uplift and exposure of these limestones during the last 5 million years has given origin to a vast cave region laden with fossil deposits, dating to the last glacial and inter-glacial period.

Fig. 2: Palenque Hill, a lowland limestone hill of the Havana-Matanzas range.
This is a karstic relict of uplifted Miocene seafloor that surrounded this region.

Within this region, we focused on a 200-meter high hill named Palenque (fig. 2-3). The hills of Palenque served as a shelter to runaway aborigines and slaves throughout the colonial period. A "palenque" is the name given to such a hideout. We selected this region mainly because of unstudied caves discovered in the 1980s, with an interesting biotic richness and endemism, characteristics that had attracted two of Cuba's foremost naturalists Carlos de la Torre and Johannes Gundlach a century before. They visited Palenque's hillside in search of unique mollusks, mammals, and birds.

Fig. 3: Karstic vegetation on the escarpment of Palenque hill, at about 180 meters above modern sea level.

A secondary but well preserved tropical semideciduous forest covers Palenque (fig. 3) with a flora that includes several kinds of trees including oaks and mahogany (Quercus and Swietenia spp.), gumbo limbo (Bursera simaruba), Royal Palms (Roystonea regia), plus other Thrinax-like palms in the upper levels. There is even coffee (Coffea arabica) brought into some caves by large fruit bats (Artibeus and Brachyphylla) and birds. Most of the lower level vegetation that extends to the agricultural savanna at the foothills include several kinds of grass, the poison ivy, locally known as Guao (Comocladia dodonea) and the toxic Chichicate (Urtica dioica).

Fig. 4. Main sinkhole of Nesfonte's cave, one of the largest cave of the Palenque, and probably the most extensive.
This is the main owl repository where most of the owl pellets have been accumulating for more than 2000 years. 

Fig. 5: The Cuban tarantula Phormictopus cubensis,  part of the penumbra cave fauna.

These fossil deposits originated from animal and plant remains mixed in with soil dragged into the caves by rainwater. Other were brought in by raptors, for example in vomitus, a form of hairball called pellet. Raptors, owls, and hawks do not fully digest bone and hair. Instead, they regurgitate them in the form of such pellets which accumulate in their cave roosts by the thousands (fig. 1, 6-7; note the round and brown pellet on the right of fig. 6). Because these raptors reuse the same roost areas from generation to generation their nests can include several thousand years of prey/pellet records. Even though their diet is selective, meaning they pick and choose from what prey is available in nature, theses pellets can provide a good record of the local fauna. The caves of Palenque provide an excellent record of that.

Fig. 6: A common vampire bat Desmodus rotundus skull in situ at the moment of discovery.
See the skulls of the brown bat Eptesicus fuscus (on far left) and large Cuban fruit bat Artibeus jamaicensis
skull (on upper right). A fresh owl pellet is next to the vampire bat skull,
 and some fresh material remains inside its braincase, testifying to its freshness.

The first serious discovery came from a newly discovered room in Cueva de la Caja or the Cave of the Box (fig. 3-4), also known as Cueva de Los Nesofontes or Nesofonte's cave, named so for the huge accumulation of Nesophontes fossil remains (more on this curious species on a future post). As archaeologist R. Viera and I explored a section of the cave, we accidentally stumbled upon a small mound on the floor of a newly discovered side room that had gone unnoticed on previous expeditions in 1994 and 2002 (Viera and Orihuela, 2006). In it, there were plant seeds scattered in a mound on the cave's floor and a vampire bat skull right on top like a cherry on the cream (fig. 6-8).

Figure 7: The vampire bat deposit as it looked before excavation on 22 December 2003.

What an interesting and unexpected discovery! At that time, vampire bats had been discovered only three times before, all exclusively from Cuba (Mayo and Woloszyn, 1974; Silva, 1979). As of today, vampire bats have not been discovered anywhere else in the greater Caribbean.

Desmodus rotundus is endemic to the New World neotropics, where it is well distributed from Mexico all the way down to northern Argentina, but in the past, that distribution included Florida, Cuba. The first fossil record came from Cueva Lamas in Havana. This fossil was discovered by Cuba's foremost paleontologist at the time Oscar Arredondo, who then sent the specimen to Dr. Karl Koopman, chiropterologist (=bat-ologist) who identified it as a common vampire bat Desmodus rotundus, identical to the continental species. In the following years, other researchers found two more specimens from which a new endemic subspecies, Desmodus rotundus puntajudensis, was erected (Woloszyn and Mayo, 1974; Jimenez et al., 2005). Later, the Cuban paleontologist William Suarez (Suarez, 2005) raised the species to the rank of full species, which made it a full Cuban endemic.

Fig. 8: Common vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus) after it's discovery at Nesophonte's cave.

However, the study of our well-preserved specimen (fig. 8-9) showed it was not referable to the new endemic form. Instead, our analysis of the skull characteristics of the continental form D. rotundus versus that of the endemic D. puntajudensis revealed that the Cuban fossils fell within D. rotundus, and did not represent a new form (Orihuela, 2011). This agreed with Koopman's original identification of the first specimen. As it seems, the Cuban fossil vamps are the same as the continental species, which may have arrived at the island during the last 10,000 years or less.

Fig. 9. Three of the four known Desmodus rotundus skulls from the Cuban Quaternary fossil record.
 Our specimen is on the far right. Line illustration from Orihuela, 2011 (copyrighted). 

An endemic form would suggest long isolation for such evolution to occur. And the presence of both, an endemic species (or subspecies) and the continental form, seems unlikely out of so poor of a record. So far, the fossil Desmodus specimens are associated with ages less than 8000 years before the present, and thus within our own current inter-glacial period, but none date to the late glacial period as was originally considered. In fact, we do not know if they were true relics of the past glacial fauna.

Osvaldo Jimenez Vazquez and his colleagues discovered vampire specimens from a cave deposit in southern Mayabeque province (formerly Havana province), providing the first radiocarbon date associated with vampire bat fossils in Cuba. Their remains dated, although indirectly, about 7000 years before the present (Jimenez et al., 2005). Our specimen posed a more complex problem and brought about new questions. They were dated, indirectly as well, between the 1950s to the 1990s (Viera and Orihuela, 2006; Orihuela, 2012; Orihuela et al. in prep.). Unfortunately, neither Cuban vampire fossil has been dated directly due to the rarity of the fossils.

Fig. 10: Pteronotus parnelli parnelli (Mormoopidae) from a transient local population at Nesophonte's cave.

What is sure is that there were vampire bats in Cuba until very recently, even if just accidentally. Our research using maximum entropy software such as Maxent, DIVA and R, employed to predict and model which bioclimate variables could have limited bat distribution, and if any of the variables could have lead to their extinction, suggests that the climate of the last 7000 years, up to our modern climate, is still appropriate to sustain many currently extinct Cuban bats including the vampire bats (work in prep.). Their extinction is considered concomitant to the extinction of the large sloths (like those I mentioned in my previous post here), which were likely part of their diet. Now we know that these sloths did not disappear during the late glacial epoch either, but instead during the last 5000 years, which is within our current inter-glacial.

So what does this mean? Where vampire bats accidentally present in the Cuban fossil record? If so, why are their fossils so rare considering how easily adaptable and reproducible the species is on the mainland? Are Desmodus fossils present in other Antillean fossil records? These are questions our current research is hoping to resolve. Stay tuned!

I want to take this opportunity to thank those that have helped on this research. First, I am eternally thankful to all those that participated in this expedition and those colleagues that helped with the analysis, their encouragement and help. These are archeologist Ricardo Viera, geographer Leonel Perez-Orozco, biologist Adrian Tejedor, Candido Santana and Joel Monzon, and many other more friends and colleagues that have made this research possible. These expeditions would have been impossible without their enthusiastic support.

This post is dedicated to the memory of Johannes Gundlach, whose birthday we celebrate today.

References

Atlas Nacional de Cuba 1969-1985.

Arredondo, O. 1958. El Vampiro Cubano. Scout 10:6-7.

Jiménez, O., M. M. Condis, and E. García. 2005. Vertebrados post-glaciales en un residuario fósil de Tyto alba scopoli (Aves: Tytonidae) en el occidente de Cuba. Revista Mexicana de Mastozoología, 9:84-111.

Koopman, K.F. 1958. A fossil vampire bat from Cuba. Breviora 90:1-4.

Silva-Taboada, G. 1979. Los Murciélagos de Cuba. Editorial Academia, La Habana. 424pp.

Orihuela, J. 2011. Skull variation of the vampire bat Desmodus rotundus (Chiroptera: Phyllostomidae): Taxonomic implications for the Cuban fossil vampire bat Desmodus puntajudensis. Chiroptera Neotropical 17(1): 963-976.

Orihuela, J. 2012. Late Holocene fauna from a cave deposit in Western Cuba: post-Columbian occurrence of the vampire bat Desmodus rotundus (Phyllostomidae: Desmodontinae). Caribbean Journal of Science, 46 (2): 297-313.

Orihuela, J., and A. Tejedor. 2012. Peter's ghost-faced bat Mormoops megalophylla (Chiroptera: Mormoopidae) from a pre-Columbian archaeological deposit in Cuba. Acta Chiropterologica 14(1): 63-72.

Orihuela, J., R. Viera, and L. Vinola. 2017. New bat records based on modern and fossil remains from the province of Matanzas, Cuba.

Suárez, W. 2005. Taxonomic Status of the Cuban Vampire Bat (Chiroptera: Phyllostomidae: Desmodontinae: Desmodus). Caribbean Journal of Science 41 (4):761-767.

Woloszyn, B.W., and N.A. Mayo. 1974. Postglacial remains of a vampire bat (Chiroptera: Desmodus) from Cuba. Acta Zool.Cracoviensia 19:253-265.

La Pictografía de la Cueva del Ciclón: ¿Primate o Chamán?

Por Osvaldo Jiménez Vázquez

Especialista mastozoólogo del Gabinete de Arqueología, Oficina del Historiador de la Habana, Cuba 

Las cuevas de Cuba guardan en sus recintos importantes testimonios gráficos de nuestros primitivos habitantes. Estos testimonios, conocidos como arte rupestre, están plasmados sobre paredes, techos y formaciones secundarias de más de un centenar de cuevas.

El arte rupestre cubano lo conforman dos tipos de manifestaciones, las pictografías y los petroglifos, ambos relacionados con creencias religiosas. Una de las pictografías más enigmáticas de Cuba, hoy infelizmente desaparecida, se encontraba en la Cueva del Ciclón, espacio hipógeo conectado con la Cueva del Gato Jíbaro, enmarcada en el Sistema Cavernario de Bellamar, costa norte de la provincia de Matanzas.

El hallazgo de este pictograma fue realizado por integrantes del grupo espeleológico Norbert Casteret entre abril y mayo de 1981, como parte de los estudios arqueológicos que realizaban en la región (imagen 1). La pictografía había sido realizada sobre un manto estalagmítico, formación secundaria situada a unos 25 metros de la entrada de la cueva y a unos 10 metros de una dolina de disolución y desplome que se halla en el centro geográfico del antro. El carbón vegetal fue el material empleado en la ejecución de la misma, por lo cual su color era negro. Su altura no superaba los 10 cm. Tanto la pictografía, como un conjunto de murales pictográficos localizados a 12 metros de esta, representan conceptualmente el estilo de “líneas inconexas” (Maciques, 1988), el cual fue ejecutado por aborígenes preagroalfareros (siboneyes). La cultura material rescatada en esta localidad confirma la relación cultural, apareciendo en las excavaciones practicadas, restos de dieta y sílex tallado (Leonel Pérez Orozco, com. pers).

Imagen 1: Foto original de la pictografia de la cueva del Ciclon, ciudad de Matanzas, Cuba.

A raíz del hallazgo, los investigadores del grupo espeleológico Norbert Casteret publicaron unas notas en el boletín que producía este colectivo (no.3 año III, 1982, Matanzas), incluyendo una reconstrucción ideal de la pictografía (imagen 2), manifestando que la misma representaba la figura de un mono araña (Ateles). Posteriormente, el paleontólogo cubano Oscar Arredondo (1983), apoyó este criterio, el cual a través del tiempo ha sido sostenido por otros autores (Gutiérrez y Jaiméz, 2007).

En busca de la verdad sobre este asunto, acudimos a Leonel Pérez Orozco, actual director de la Oficina del Conservador de la Ciudad de Matanzas, quien fuera presidente del grupo espeleológico Norbert Casteret en los momentos del hallazgo de la pictografía. Este buen amigo, quien ya no cree que la pictografía representara un primate, nos facilitó la única imagen fotográfica que existe de la misma (imagen 1). La reconstrucción ideal y la fotografía no pueden ser comparadas correctamente, pues la primera representa una vista frontal, y la segunda, por problemas de espacio dentro de la cueva, fue tomada desde un plano inferior. No obstante, se observan diferencias. Por ejemplo, en la fotografía la cabeza tiene forma ovalada y no está encajada entre los hombros, por otra parte, los brazos están más abiertos y ambos son iguales, a diferencia de lo que se observa en la reconstrucción. Las piernas, por su parte, están dibujadas en la reconstrucción con un trazo único, en tanto, en la foto apreciamos trazos discontinuos, como corresponde al estilo de líneas inconexas. Esta pictografía sugiere, más bien, una figura antropomorfa danzando o adorando, quizás represente un chamán en medio de un evento religioso.

Imagen 2: Interpretacion de la pictografia del Ciclon. Notece que esta reproduccion no es fiel a la original.

Existen hechos de otra índole que refutan la representación de un mono en este pictograma. En primer lugar, los aborígenes preagroalfareros y agroalfareros (taínos) cubanos habían sustituido desde siglos atrás los referentes faunísticos continentales de su cultura, de tal manera que en el arte precolombino, sobre todo agroalfarero, son motivos reiterados lechuzas, búhos y murciélagos. Algunos autores (Harrington, 1921; Arredondo y Varona, 1983) opinaron que ciertos diseños modelados en las asas de recipientes de la cultura antes citada correspondían a rostros de monos. Sin embargo, en la actualidad se considera que tales diseños representan rostros de murciélagos (Rodríguez, 2000; Rodríguez, 2002; Borroto y Arredondo, 2011), animales que, al igual que aves nocturnas como búhos y lechuzas, estaban posiblemente relacionados con el Coaybay, lugar a donde van las opías o almas de los muertos, señorío de Maquetaurie Guayaba (Pané, 1984). Por último, las investigaciones paleontológicas demuestran que el mono de Varona (Paralouatta varonai) única especie de primate del Cuaternario endémica de Cuba, se extinguió mucho antes del arribo del hombre precolombino a Cuba (Silva et al., 2007), y el mono de Montané (Ateles fusciceps), descubierto en la Cueva de la Boca del Purial en 1888, fue introducido hace menos de 300 años desde Sudamérica (Miller, 1916b; MacPhee y Rivero, 1996).

Referencias 

Arredondo, O., y L. S. Varona. 1983. Sobre la validez de Montaneia anthropomorpha Ameghino, 1910 (Primates: Cebidae). Poeyana, 255: 1-21.

Borroto Páez, R. y C. Arredondo Antúnez. 2011. Los mamíferos en el arte aborigen. 213-219. En: Mamíferos en Cuba. (Eds. R. Borroto-Páez y C. A. Mancina). UPC Print, Vaasa, Finlandia. 271 pp.

Gutierrez Calvache, D. y E. J. Jaiméz Salgado. 2007. Introducción a los primates fósiles de Las Antillas. 120 años de primatología en el Caribe insular. Santo Domingo, Editora Universitaria, 208 pp.

MacPhee, R. D. E., y M. Rivero de la Calle. 1996. Accelerator mass spectrometry 14C age determination for the alleged "Cuban spider monkey", Ateles (= Montaneia) anthropomorpha. J. Human Evol., 30:89-94.

Maciques Sánchez, E. 1988. El arte rupestre de Matanzas. Revista Museo, Año I, 2° Época, junio de 1988, Matanzas, Cuba.

Miller, G. S., Jr. 1916. The teeth of a monkey found in Cuba. Smithsonian Misc. ColI., 66(13):1-3, 1 lam.

Orihuela, J. and A. Tejedor. 2012. Peter's ghost faced bat Mormoops megalophylla (Chiroptera: Mormoopidae) from a pre-Columbian archaeological deposit in Cuba. Acta Chiropterologica, 14(1): 63-72. Available here.

Pané, R. 1984. Relación acerca de las antigüedades de los indios. México, Siglo XXI Editores S. A.

Rodríguez Arce, C. 2000. Apuntes sobre la figura del murciélago en la iconografía prehispánica de Cuba. El Caribe Arqueológico, 4: 94-99.

Rodríguez Durán, A. 2002. Los murciélagos en las culturas precolombinas de Puerto Rico. Focus, 1 (2): 15-18.

Silva Taboada, G., W. Suárez Duque y S. Díaz Franco. 2007. Compendio de los mamíferos terrestres autóctonos de Cuba vivientes y extinguidos. La Habana, Editorial Boloña, 465 pp.

 

Shaman or Monkey?

Hello everyone out in the interverse. I have just recently returned from a very successful fieldwork season in Cuba, of which I will be posting about soon, but for the time being I have an interesting piece written by my colleague and friend Osvaldo Jimenez to share.  If you haven't yet seen them, he's the author of several previous posts on fossil monkeys and the discoverer of some of those interesting fossil remains.

His new post titled "Shaman or Monkey" (in Spanish: ¿Primate o Chamán? ) deals with the discovery and interpretation of a very enigmatic cave pictograph representing what seems to be a dancing human figure, originally interpreted as an erect monkey (fig. 1).

Figure 1: Cave pictograph of Ciclon Cave (or Cave of the Cyclone) discovered by members of the local speleological group Norbert Casteret in Matanzas city, Matanzas, Cuba.

Osvaldo's post tells the story of a local speleological group, so named Norbert Casteret in honor of that famous speleologist, that in 1981 discovered the interesting pictograph on a cave named Cyclone. This pictograph is enigmatic because it has disappeared from the cave wall, and so out of the radar of those interested in its study.

A cave pictograph is a form of Amerindian cave art executed with charcoal or any other form ocher-black colorants or pigments applied directly on a cave wall. These are somewhat common in the Greater Antilles, and especially Cuba, where they reach a high degree of technical detail and complexity. Such is the case of the concentric circles of Punta del Este, on the Isle of Pines (fig. 2), or Ambrosio Cave in the Varadero peninsula (fig. 3), northwestern Cuba.

Figure 2: Main concentric circle pictograph in Puna del Este, Isle of Pines. Photo and courtesy of Cuban archaeologist Jorge Garcell Dominguez.

Figure 3: Cave pictograph number 28 from Ambrosio Cave in Varadero, northwestern Cuba.

Such cave art is attributed to Cuban Amerindians, originally named Siboney, but that for the sake of simplicity is now grouped with similarly related cultures such as the Guanahatabey. These Amerindians lived in Cuba between 5000 and 1800 years before the present (Dacal and Rivero de la Calle, 1996), had no ceramics, and only a simple shell-based toolkit. They inhabited coastal areas and used caves for religious-ritualistic purposes, including artistic expression and burial.

Much research has been conducted of these cultures and their artistic expressions and will be too extensive to cite here. For the interested reader the work of the late Dr. Antonio Nunez Jimenez titled Cuba: "Dibujos Rupestres" (1975), "Cuevas y Pictografias", and "El Arte Rupestre Cubano" (1986), in addition to "Art and Archaeology of Pre-Columbian Cuba" (1996) by Ramon Dacal Maure and Manuel Rivero de la Calle could serve as great introductory material.

Since the late 1980s, there has been a revival in the study and interpretation of this culture's art form in Cuba. At the forefront of such investigation are the archaeologist Esteban Maciques Sanchez, Roger Arrazcaeta, director of the Archaeological Cabinet (an archaeologically oriented sub-office of the Historian's Office in Havana, Cuba), and Jorge Garcell Dominguez to name a few. Some of the current work has concentrated on dating, interpreting, and correlating these Amerindian artistic manifestations with burial rituals, and the possible influence of the moonlight-sunlight cycles within the cave's space. Such news can be accessed on the site Cuba Arqueologica. For the relevant citations, the reader is directed to Osvaldo's interesting post.



Figure 4: Palenque Hill pictograph discovered by Leonel P. Orozco and myself on 1 of June this year.

Incidentally and to my great surprise, I made my first cave art discovery during a recent excursion to the caves of the Serrania del Palenque, a lowland limestone hill formation in the northwestern province of Matanzas. These seemed to be the intricate remains of a probable more complex piece that have now been erased by time (fig. 4).  However, the origin and age of this pictograph is presently unknown and currently researched. But it seems to be one of the very few discovered in the region!

I hope you all enjoy these ventures and stay tuned for more puzzle pieces from the Greater Antillean paleoworld.

Mono de Mariana (Paralouatta marianae), el primate más antiguo del Caribe

Escrito por Osvaldo Jiménez Vázquez con fotografías e ilustraciones de los archivos de los doctores Ross D. MacPhee y Manuel Iturralde-Vinent

En 1992, un equipo de geólogos y paleontólogos de los Museos de Historia Natural de Cuba y Americano de Historia Natural, de New York, parte al campo para localizar lugares donde estuvieran expuestas rocas antiguas originadas en ambientes terrestres, en las que fuera probable encontrar restos de los primeros mamíferos que llegaron a Cuba, incluidos los primates. El proyecto de búsqueda se basaba en estudios geológicos que sugerían que Cuba, y el resto de las Antillas Mayores, habían estado cercanas al continente Sudamericano, con el cual compartían tres grupos de mamíferos, primates, perezosos y roedores. 

Foto 1. Equipo de trabajo de noviembre del 1993. De izquierda a derecha, en primera fila, Inés Horovitz, Ross MacPhee, Teresita Huerta, Manuel Iturralde-Vinent. Fila trasera, Stephen Diaz Franco, Osvaldo Jiménez Vázquez (autor de esta nota) y Reinaldo Rojas Consuegra.



El grupo Samá, de la Sociedad Espeleológica de Cuba, residente en la provincia de Sancti Spíritus, informó acerca de un yacimiento paleontológico situado a 18 km al sudeste de la ciudad homónima, próximo a la presa Zaza, en el municipio La Sierpe. Este yacimiento había aflorado con la excavación del Canal Zaza, profundo y prolongado conducto de irrigación que cortó una colina, denominada desde entonces Domo de Zaza, quedando expuestos unos 3 km de estratos o capas de sedimentos a ambos lados del canal. De acuerdo con sus características geológicas y paleoecológicas, estos sedimentos se habían originado bajo la influencia de ambientes marinos y terrestres, y tenían una edad entre 18 y 21 millones de años. En la época en que se formaban esos sedimentos, el territorio de Cuba estaba dividido en tres archipiélagos, uno occidental, uno central y otro al este. El archipiélago central, donde se encuentra hoy el yacimiento paleontológico de Domo de Zaza, era una isla elevada y de poca extensión, circundada por un mar de escasa profundidad con cayos inundados periódicamente.

Foto 2: Tres vistas del yacimiento Domo de Zaza, a la izquierda, vistas del canal y de los sedimentos expuestos; a la derecha, vistas de los estratos documentados. Abreviaturas, SG, sedimentos aluviales con gravas y arenas,  GC, arcilla de lagunas, CL, estrato de carbonatos marinos, CB,  lecho de calcarenita marina, PS, paleosuelo. De MacPhee et al., 2003.

Domo de Zaza era, pues, el sitio ideal para la búsqueda, sin embargo, los huesos no se encuentran con facilidad. Entre los inconvenientes estaba la extensión del área a explorar, la abundancia de marabú (Dichrostachys cinerea), lo difícil de distinguir los huesos entre millones de fragmentos de rocas, y el sol abrasador. En la primera expedición se encontraron fragmentos de huesos de un perezoso, consistentes en un hueso craneal, un diente, un húmero, una vértebra y una pelvis. Los investigadores estaban emocionados pues se trataba de una especie nueva para la ciencia, nombrada más adelante Imagocnus zazae, nombre que significa “perezoso soñado, de Domo de Zaza”. Este hallazgo fue importante para la historia de la fauna del Caribe pues se había encontrado uno de los parientes más antiguo de los perezosos autóctonos y estaba relacionado con los perezosos argentinos del período Neógeno (entre 23,3 y 1,64 millones de años).

Al año siguiente, en el mes de noviembre, se organizó una segunda expedición, dirigida nuevamente por los doctores Ross MacPhee y Manuel Iturralde-Vinent, con la colaboración de los investigadores Inés Horovitz, Reinaldo Rojas, Stephen Díaz Franco y quien suscribe. Esta fue muy exitosa, pues se encontró un resto de otra especie nueva, esta vez un mono (Paralouatta marianae).

Foto 3: El autor en el momento del hallazgo del astrágalo del mono de Mariana (Paralouatta marianae). En la mano derecha sostiene la pieza ósea.

Este hallazgo fue muy emocionante. Llevábamos días sin encontrar algún resto significativo y dominaba el desanimo. El día del descubrimiento, tenía fe de que haríamos un hallazgo importante y así lo manifesté a mis compañeros durante el viaje en jeep hacia el sitio. Horas después, encontramos un astrágalo de mono. La celebración fue grande esa noche. La pieza encontrada permitió conocer aspectos interesantes de la vida de este primate fósil. Las dimensiones del astrágalo son casi similares a las del mono aullador actual Alouatta caraya, el cual tiene un peso que oscila entre 5 y 7 kg. Es decir, Paralouatta marianae era un mono de talla apreciable. También se supo que no fue un mono muy saltador, estando apto para caminar y correr sobre las ramas, y pasar gran parte de su tiempo de actividad diaria sobre el suelo.



Foto 4: Astrágalo del mono de Mariana (Paralouatta marianae), vista dorsal y vista ventral. Used in MacPhee et al., 2003.

El estudio de los mamíferos terrestres del Domo de Zaza demostró que estos animales tenían parientes fósiles y vivientes en Sudamérica, desde donde vinieron sus ancestros, como se teorizaba en la hipótesis que mencionamos previamente. Estos nexos filogenéticos motivaron que se estudiara más a fondo la manera y la época en que los antecesores de nuestros perezosos, roedores y primates pudieron arribar al Caribe. Para esto se tomaron en cuenta diferentes hipótesis geológicas, llegándose a conformar una nueva idea, que ha sido generalmente aceptada.

Foto 5: Trabajos de campo en el yacimiento Domo de Zaza, 1994. Stephen Díaz (con overol azul) y el autor (con gorra y camisa blancas), observan a Pável Valdés extrayendo el carapacho de una tortuga marina de la familia Pelomedusidae

Esta idea plantea con suficiente certeza que hace unos 35-33 millones de años, en el límite entre las épocas Eoceno y Oligoceno, pudo existir una cadena de islas entre el norte de Suramérica y las Antillas Mayores. Estaban emplazadas a lo largo de la Cresta de Aves, una cadena de montañas actualmente sumergida al oeste de las Antillas Menores, que se elevo sobre el nivel del mar en la época señalada, por la coincidencia de un levantamiento tectónico y un considerable descenso del nivel marino. En ese momento, las islas del norte del arco de las Antillas Mayores (centro y oriente de Cuba – Haití-Republica Dominicana - Puerto Rico – Islas Vírgenes) constituían una sola isla grande o una serie de islas separadas por espacio marinos muy estrechos. La cadena de islas de la Cresta de Aves estaba emergida entre el bloque Puerto Rico – Islas Vírgenes y un pequeño continente noroccidental de Suramérica –separado en ese momento del resto del continente por un amplio espacio marino. Los geólogos que postularon esta nueva idea llamaron a la cadena de islas o guirnalda insular Gaarlandia, que significa “tierra montañosa entre la Cresta de Aves y las Antillas Mayores”.

Foto 6: Reconstrucción paleogeográfica de Cuba; se aprecian los archipiélagos que conformaban su territorio en el Mioceno temprano parte alta (18-21 millones de años). El Domo de Zaza está ubicado en el archipiélago central, marcado con una estrella encerrada en un círculo.

Esta guirnalda de islas estuvo emergida durante uno o dos millones de años, tiempo muy corto en términos geológicos, desapareciendo hace unos 32-30 millones de años, cuando el levantamiento regional que determinó la aparición de aquella cresta llegó a su fin. Esto ocurrió debido a un descenso general de los terrenos. Luego, las posteriores manifestaciones tectónicas en el Caribe, incidieron en la subdivisión estructural de las áreas terrestres existentes, lo que dio origen a las islas actuales de La Española, Cuba, Puerto Rico y la porción oriental de Jamaica, y los canales que las separan.

Todo parece indicar que Gaarlandia pudo ser la vía utilizada por los mamíferos terrestres antiguos para llegar al Caribe. Sin embargo, esta vía implicaba grandes dificultades. Entre estos impedimentos se cuenta que en determinados momentos, los propágulos fundadores o primeros ejemplares de los mamíferos que colonizaron las Antillas, debieron enfrentarse a las travesías marinas. De esta manera, solo pasaron aquellos que tuvieron capacidad de dispersión suficiente para sobrevivir el trayecto. Así, pues, de los grupos de animales que poblaron el pequeño continente noroccidental de Suramérica, solo tres órdenes de mamíferos terrestres están representados en el Caribe, de los cuales uno solo, los roedores, sobreviven.

Con la subdivisión de las islas antillanas las poblaciones de perezosos, roedores y monos quedaron aisladas, de manera que, a partir de uno o varios antecesores de origen sudamericano, se produjo un proceso evolucionario en el transcurso de varios millones de años, dando como resultado que en cada isla haya habido formas diferentes de primates, con la excepción de Puerto Rico, donde no se han encontrado estos animales hasta el momento.

Nota Final

Más información sobre el autor de este post puede encontrarse en su otro aporte en este blog sobre el mono de Varona.

MacPhee, R. D. E., and Manuel Iturralde-Vinent. 1994. First Tertiary land mammal from Greater Antilles: An Early Miocene sloth from Cuba. American Museum Novitates, 3094: 13pp.

MacPhee, R. D. E., M. A. Iturralde-Vinent, and E. S. Gaffney. 2003. Domo de Zaza, and Early Miocene Vertebrate Locality in South-Central Cuba, with notes on the tectonic evolution of  Puerto Rico and the Mona Passage. American Museum Novitates, 3394: 42pp. 

Interesting Geoformation at Fort San Severino (Matanzas, Cuba)

In this post, I will attempt to merge two of my favorite sciences of the past - historical archaeology and geology - by discussing a geological formation underlying the colonial fort San Severino, in the picturesque bay of Matanzas, northwestern Cuba.

Underlying all architectural structures there are geological formations. They serve as the foundation for the structures that we build on them or as a quarry for the myriad of construction materials and necessary natural resources derived from them. They are true substructures to our daily existence and a constant reminder of the importance of geology in our everyday life.

Figure 1: View of Fort San Severino's position in the northern coastline of Matanzas bay. 

Background on Fort San Severino

Fort San Severino is a 322-year-old Spanish colonial fort, and the oldest surviving architectural structure in the city of Matanzas (fig.1, 3). The city of Matanzas is itself a tricentennial port city on the north coast of Cuba that acquired world fame during the sugar boom of the 19th century (Hernandez, 2006). I will dedicate a whole post on this marvelous city and its history later (hint hint).

Map of Matanzas city, in Matanzas province, Cuba:
the setting of Fort San Severino (localized slightly offs center of map) . From Atlas de Cuba (1969). North is up.

San Severino was planned as a component within the military protection belt of the region of Havana. This region had a geopolitical span that included the small population of Matanzas (Alfonso, 1854). The bay of Matanzas was spottily underpopulated then but had frequent illicit trade along with sporadic pirate attacks. This illicit commerce and pirate raids, in a way, prompted the Spanish crown for its protection (Alfonso, 1854). The most famous incident is without a doubt that of the Dutch privateer Piet Hein when his ships attacked and possessed the Spanish treasure fleet (the Silver Fleet or Silverloot) right on the bay in 1628 (fig. 2). Other previous, but of nevertheless interesting occurrences include that of the Veracruz fleet who took refuge in the bay running from Jacques de Sore in 1555, and the capture of Francesco Estroce by Pedro Menendez Marquez in 1580 (Dominguez, 1959). An instance in which the bay of Matanzas served as a military-strategic locality.

Figure 2: Woodcut engraving commemorating the possession of the Silver Fleet by Piet Hien (shown in the upper left corner) on the bay of Matanzas (shown on the insert map of Cuba on left lower corner) This illustration is idealized because the hills surrounding the bay are of a gentle slope, like an amphitheater, not as steep as shown here.

Plans for the construction of the fort began in the 1680s, but the first stone was not placed until the fall of 1693 when the city was officially founded (Alfonso, 1854; Hernandez, 2006). In fact, this post is about its building stones, its masonry, and the Jaimanitas formation, which is its underlying geological setting. The Jaimanitas formation was originally called coastal "Seboruco" by Alexander Humboldt, and other geographers of the 18th and 19th century, but not described until 1940 (Lexicon, 2014:47). Both the masonry and the Jaimanitas Fm. are biogenic fossil-rich limestones formed in shallow warm marine environments, and its coastal span is also the geological substrate to other coastal military forts around the bay.

There are many ways to classify limestone. This is usually done based on its composition and content. Limestone is a carbonate sedimentary rock most commonly formed in warm and shallow clear waters, formed from the accumulation and compaction of reef debris, bits of coral, shells, alga, sand, and even fish fecal pellets within a Calcium carbonate matrix. The definitions given below are a form of lithological classification, which pertains to the macroscopic aspect of the rock or simply those aspects visible to the naked eye. In the petrographic sense or the microscopic characteristics of the rock, such limestones are named for the particulates or clasts that make them up and the type matrix or cement that holds everything together (fig. 4-7).

Fort San Severino sits on the Jaimanitas Formation, an uplifted coralline limestone formed underwater from coral reef rubble, sand, and microscopic microorganisms during the latter part of the Pleistocene epoch, between 180,000 and 82,000 thousand years ago. This formation surrounds the coastal parameter of the bay of Matanzas, and most of the Cuban archipelago (Cabrera and Penalver, 2003).

Recent uplifting due to plate movements and the resulting adjusting and readjusting of consequent fractures of the rock has raised or uplifted some of these massive reef biomes above present sea level, providing a geological setting to the region where fort Severino lies. One can now walk on what used to be coral reefs 5-10 meters below water during the Pleistocene (fig. 3-5).

Figure 3: Fort San Severino, where the masonry merges into the underlying Jaimanitas Formation
at Santa Ana bastion; photo looking North.

Formations

Geologic formations are the basic units of lithostratigraphy (from the Greek lithos = meaning rock, and the Latin stratum = layer), which is a technical term for the science that studies rock layers, their age, and their origins. There are many practical and intellectual benefits for human society in their study. In the practical sense, knowing about rock beds and their possible age is essential for a bundle of everyday practicalities such as basic materials, the discovery of fossil fuels or minerals, and many other resources that right now many take for granted. Geology is inseparably linked to human social and economic development and advance.

Formations are often composed of several types of rocks, but with distinctive, identifiable characteristics as a whole. The limestone of the Jaimanitas Fm. is generally a fossiliferous limestone, meaning that its composition is comprised of fossilized organisms, mostly extant, which also gives it the name of organogenic limestone (Cuban Lexicon, 2014:47). When these layers of sediment form and consolidate into rock they record within themselves clues to the conditions of the environment that allowed for their formation.

Figure 4: Part of the East wall section. The stone masonry lies over the uplifted Pleistocene reef that is the Jaimanitas Fm. Bullet holes are visible in this section, a reminder of its military past. Note how the limestone was shaved to accommodate the masonry.

Figure 5: Contact between the Jaimanitas fm. underlying the eastern wall masonry.
Note that the surface of the natural rock was manicured and leveled to adopt the building blocks. 

The association of some Quaternary fossils characterizes the Jaimanitas formation, although index fossils are not yet assigned to it specifically (Cabrera and Penalver, 2003). These fossils include colonies of scleractinian corals such as Acropora and Diploria species (fig. 6) and the mollusk shells of the large queen conch Strombus gigas visible on figure 7. These fossils dot the sea walls and masonry that encases the fort.

Figure 6: Fossilized colony of the brain coral Diploria sp. in situ
within the reef rubble on the fort's old natural sea wall.

Figure 7: Fossilized queen conch Strombus gigas on one of Severino's walls.

Interesting Problem

The stones that make up the masonry of the fort are also composed of what seems to be the same limestone which generally makes up the Jaimanitas fm. But here is a contradicting problem. Local legends and some accounts recount that the stones used for the construction of the fort, quarried by slaves and prisoners, came from the hills north of the fort, and thus not from the surrounding coastal rock which is the Jaimanitas fm (Hernandez, 2006: 40). The Jaimanitas formation does not extend far away from the coast, and could not have been quarried anywhere else, except in its proximal coastal settings. Moreover, the first formation that pinches out into the hills rising behind the fort, which is the Canimar formation, is made up of marl, a softer and older limestone. Could these legends be wrong, and instead the rocks were mostly quarried right on where the fort was built?

Documentation shows this is likely so. Few letters sent from the captain general, Severino de Manzaneda to the king of Spain Charles II (in Spanish Carlos 2) dated between 1693 and 1694, hint at the extraction, in situ, of the Jaimanitas limestone using explosives (AGI/Santo Domingo, 457; Hernandez, 2006: 42). Some of these documents suggest the recycling of the rock excavated from the leveling of the moat was used as a building material as well. In one of the letters Severino mentions its usefulness because of the rock's hardness, he calls them "piedras durisimas" or really hard stones (Hernandez, 2006: 42). This could explain why most of the masonry observed at the fort resembles the Jaimanitas Fm.Yet, these are just observations that have not been properly tested. To confirm them, one would have to sample all these geological formations, and compare them lithologically and petrologically to several samples from the fort's base rock and masonry. But that will be a project for the future.

Addendum: November 24, 2016
 

It was recently brought to my attention (thanks to Odlanyer Hernández, archaeologist colleague) that the conclusion reached here from my observations were in fact tested and published in the 1980's and 90's by Samuel Gerardo, a local researcher. Gerardo found that the rocks could have indeed only come from the coastal limestones of the Jaimanitas Fm. and not the softer rocks from other formations surrounding the bay.

I want to end with words from S. Hernandez's book on Fort San Severino (my translation from Spanish) because I think with them she captures the essence, a bit of the romanticism and nostalgia associated with the investigation of such antique structure where so many things happened to human lives for so many years:

"...This investigation is just a start point, this theme is not extinct and the research must continue. Unearthing and unraveling the anecdotes and occurrences impregnated on the walls of the old fort is just a matter of time. The waters of the bay no longer wash its shore, but the sea is visible from its interior..."

San Severino: old guardian of the bay of Matanzas,
overlooking the bay in the same way it has done for the last 300 years.

References

Alfonso, Pedro. 1854. Historias de un Matancero: apuntes para la historia de Cuba, con relacion a la ciudade de San Carlos y San Severino de Matanzas. Marsal y Ca., Matanzas.

Archivo General de Indias (AGI)/Santo_Domingo, 457: Severino al Rey: feb. 1693 and 3 de nov. 1694.

Cabrera, Miguel and Leandro L. Penalver. 2003. Contribucion a la estratigrafia de la formacion Jaimanitas y su relacion estratigrafica con las demas formaciones del Pleistoceno superior. Memorias GEOMIN, 2003, La Habana, March 24-28, ISBN 959-7117-11-8.

Dominguez, F. J. Ponte, 1959. Matanzas: Biografia de Una Provincia.  

Hernandez Godoy, Silvia. 2006. El Castillo de San Severino: Insomne Caballero del Puerto de Matanzas. Ediciones Matanzas, Matanzas, Cuba.

Stratigraphic Lexicon of Cuba. 2014. Instituto de Geologia y Paleontologia, Editorial Centro Nacional de Informacion Geologica.