Fossil Matter Trivia I: Can you identify this fossil?

 I have in mind to post, in the upcoming months, several images of fossils with the idea for you, the reader, to identify them. Leave your identification in the comments section below or email me, and once the contents are in, I'll post the correct answer below.

Alright! Let's begin easy. Can you identify this fossil?

The Bats of Matanzas

The Province of Matanzas, in western Cuba, is known for the wonderful white sands of Varadero Beach, its turquoise waters, the amazing Bellamar caves, and the Zapata Swamp, the largest "humedal" in all the Caribbean. What Matanzas is not known for, however, is for its richness in bat species. Of the 28 living species recorded for the Cuban archipelago, 26 inhabit the province of Matanzas, representing the six bat families that inhabit Cuba (1).

Leach's Single-Leaf nosed bat (Monophyllus redmani).
This species feeds mostly on pollen and plays a key role in pollination of plants.

A reason for the high diversity of bats in Matanzas may be that Cuba does not possess major geographical barriers such as very tall mountains or deserts. Instead, the island is characterized by its low-lying landscape, with hills that rarely surpass 300 m in height. As a result, bat distribution in Cuba is highly homogeneous. Similar numbers of species are found in all other of Cuba's 15 provinces. This could be a reflection of the area's most recent geological history or less collecting efforts in the rest of Cuba.

The Cuban Archipelago (GoogleEarth). 

Bats are amazing creatures, with amazing adaptations. With their skin-webbed wings, velvety fur, and sharp teeth, bats have probably cruised the Cuban skies in search of food and shelter for a least 33 million years (Eocene-Oligocene), when the island emerged and became available for colonization; although, unfortunately, we only have bat fossils from the last 20 thousand years (2).

Waterhouse's Leaf-nosed bat (Macrotus waterhousei). 

The biological diversity and uniqueness of Cuba is a result of the island’s intricate geological history and its long isolation from the mainland. Over 60% of the Cuban landscape is karstic, and nearly 80 % if the submerged platform is counted, indicating a high potential in the availability of caves, crucial shelters that allow high species richness. In fact, this has been correlated by bat researchers (Brunett and Medellin, 2001). Of the 28 known Cuban bats, 15 are strict cave -dwellers, with most others using caves opportunistically (1).

Insectivorous Waterhouse's Leaf-nosed bat (Macrotus waterhousei) in flight

Here is where Matanzas shines. Matanzas harbors today the most extensive subaerial karst region of the entire Cuban archipelago, a potentially very cave-rich region ~65,500 km² wide. Probably, no other province in Cuba has more caves available for bat roosting than Matanzas today. Moreover, this was more strikingly so 10,000 years ago, when the Gulf of Batabanó, south of the western half of Cuba, had the largest potential in the availability of caves for bat roosting anywhere in the Cuban archipelago, competing in the Caribbean only with the Bahama bank. Once the ice of the last glacial maximum melted with the warmer temperatures of the Holocene epoch, sea level rose and inundated most of the Cuban ancient karst plains, drowning about ~13,300 km² of latent cave-rich territory (3), essential for bat life in the island, and likely culling the territory of a few species. Many have postulated this as the reason for the disappearance of several bat species.

Jamaican Fruit-eating bat Artibeus jamaicensis  roosting on
the calcarenite limestone of Varadero's Ambrosio Cave. 

Matanzas has played an important role in the study of Cuban bats since at least the XIX century. Four of Cuba's bats Pteronotus parnelli, Pteronotus quadridens, Phyllonycteris poeyi and Tadarida brasiliensis (muscula), were collected and described for the first time from Matanzas, near the coffee plantation Fundador de Canímar. This feat is the work of the German naturalist, Johannes Gundlach.

Sooty Moustached-bat Pteronotus quadridens

Gundlach stopped in Cuba on his way to South America and fell in love with the island. I venture to say, he fell in love with Matanzas as well, for he took residence there for nearly the rest of his life. He settled in the lush region near the Canímar River, where he stayed with the Booth family who had plantations there. Gundlach roamed the countryside, especially the Zapata Swamp, and the Canímar River gorge where he observed and collected specimens of mollusks, reptiles, and bats.

Albumen print of Johannes Gundlach (XIX century)

It is through the work of the proliferous Johannes Gundlach and Gilberto Silva Taboada that I came to love bats. In 1992, my parents gave me Silva Taboada's Los Murcielagos de Cuba (The Bats of Cuba), which to my delight had a great introduction to the life of Gundlach and his bat research.

Two-thousand-year-old fossils of Jamaican Fruit-eating bat (above)
and the ultra rare Cuban pallid bat Antrozous koopmani (below). 

Under the auspice of Gundlach and Silva, I studied the bats living in the roof of our schools and nearby caves, amassing a large set of information, with other colleagues, on the bat diversity in the city and nearby caves. This information resulted in over 100 new fossil and modern bat-collecting localities, several publications, and first records for the province of Matanzas.
For example, we (Ricardo Viera and I) reported the new records of the rare and extinct Common vampire bat Desmodus rotundus, Cuban fruit-eating bat Artibeus anthonyi, Peter’s ghost-faced bat Mormoops megalophylla, Greater funnel-eared bat Natalus primus, and Koopman’s pallid bat Antrozous koopmani. In addition, to new records of living Cuban lesser funnel-eared bat Chilonatalus macer, Cuban yellow bat Lasiurus insularis and Pfeiffer’s red bat Lasiurus pfeifferi , and including remote localities in the Zapata Swamp as in the urban Varadero (see publications here, and Viera's here).

A male Jamaican Fruit-eating bat Artibeus jamaicensis
from Palenque Hill Cave, Mayabeque. 

Currently, we are finishing a gazetteer on all the known fossil and modern bat localities in the province that can be useful towards entropy modeling for species distribution in the archipelago. We hope to collaborate with all those interested.

More so, the research continues. Some of our findings have been corroborated by Proyecto CUBABAT under the direction of Melissa Connelly, with the collaboration of colleagues in Matanzas. They have recently reported, and photographed, the Cuban fig-eating bat Phyllops falcatus in Varadero, so far only reported there from fossil remains (see citations above), and the Cuban lesser funnel-eared bat Chilonatalus macer, and Pfeiffer’s red bat Lasiurus pfeifferi (M. Connelly, pers. comm.) This project has a great potential, for it disseminates important information on the ecological importance of bats. Additionally,  through research, they collect useful data crucial for bat conservation in not only Matanzas but also all of Cuba and the Greater Antilles.

We wish them success!


Acknowledgements

I thank once more, my friend and mentor Dr. Adrian Tejedor for his support and guidance. And once again for helping unravel my torturous prose. Thank you profe. I also thank Ricardo A. Viera, Lazaro Vinola, Leonel Perez, Canido Santana, and Joel Monzon for the information provided and years of trecking up and down the caves of Matanzas in search of bats and fossils.

Sources

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

2. Iturralde-Vinent, M. see his geological literature regarding Matanzas on Biblioteca Digital Cubana de Geociencias.

3. Atlas Nacional de Cuba 1969-1985.

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.

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.

Viera, R. A. 2004. Aportes a la Quiropterofauna nacional. 1861: Revista de Espeleologia y Arqueologia, Matanzas, 5 (1): 21-23.

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

Timely quotes about science: Science Rules

Hi there! Greetings from the blog-verse. Here I share some interesting, inspirational, and timely quotes about science from some of the greatest minds of our time. Enjoy and remember the wisdom of these wise men.

"Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false"  E. O. Wilson

"We are drowning in information while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely"  E. O. Wilson

"Political ideology can corrupt the mind and science" E. O. Wilson

"There is no greater education than the one that is self-driven" Neil deGrasse Tyson

"Science simply tells the best stories" Neil deGrasse Tyson

"When you make the finding yourself even if you're the last person on Earth to see the light, you'll never forget it" Carl Sagan

"Science rules" Bill Nye

Public Connotation : Theory or Hypothesis?

Most people do not know the difference between a theory and a hypothesis. These two terms hold different connotations and meaning for the public than does for scientists--or at least science trained. 

Page from Charles Darwin's diary
 (courtesy of Darwin Online).

In science, a theory is a well-supported fact. It is supported and corroborated by many tests or experiments and observations. Examples of theories in science include the theory of evolution in Biology, the theory of plate tectonics, theory of gravitation, the theory of Relativity, and the laws of photoelectric effects(which by the way is one of Einstein's greatest contribution to science which gained him the Nobel Prize in theoretical physics in 1921, but I digress). These theories are not conjecture and are considered facts because they have been proven over and over again, consistently, and are in a way, predictable. No serious person, in my opinion, doubts gravity. 

A scientific hypothesis is a question or idea that remains to be proven--meaning it is not yet quite a theory or law; more observations and experimentation is needed to corroborate it or disprove it. For example, the hypothesis that dinosaurs were warm-blooded, or whether natural selection is the main mechanisms of speciation--the source or origin of species, or the currently hot hypothesis of human-induced climate change. These are scientific hypotheses. 

An important aspect of hypotheses is that they must make testable predictions. If a hypothesis does not make a prediction or gives it certain qualities that allow the researcher to test it, then the hypothesis make the logical fallacy of being empty. An empty hypothesis thus makes no prediction and is untestable. One could never know whether is true or conjecture and would have to speculate always on its foundation. An example of this is that of the Bermuda Triangle, but that's for another post. These are the meaning of a scientific theory and hypothesis as intended.

The public, however, uses the term theory with another meaning. For instance, the theory that Big Foot exists, or the theory of Kennedy's assassination, or even of ancient aliens, gave rise to our most important civilizations. These in reality, if there is any serious intention, are only hypotheses. They still require much more convincing evidence in order to be proven or disproven. But they are by no means theories or laws, they are still hypotheses.

So there, the public confuses the meaning of the terms hypothesis and theory. You may hear it on the news or read it on social media. But these vehicles only seem to obscure and contort the meaning of these two terms, which results in a confused usage by the public, leading to the misusage of the term theory when is really meant hypothesis.

Famous Charles Darwin "I Think" quote.
Charles Darwin diary courtesy of Darwin Online. 

I recommend, although in my very own biased way, two books that can expand on these topics, and help in our ever-continuous battle against science illiteracy in the World. One is "Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future" (2010) by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, Basics Books, New York. The second is Donald Prothero's (2007) "Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters" Columbia University Press, New York. 

Columbus and Rediscovery of the New World

In October we celebrate Christopher Columbus's rediscovery of the New World.

On October 11, 1492, Rodrigo de Triana shouted "land!" from the mast of the Santa Maria. The next morning, on the island of Guanahani, modern Bahamas, Columbus and his crew began an unprecedented conquest of the Americas that involved the extinction of thousands of species and the introduction of many others.

Engraving from 1496 showing explorers on their way to the New World. 

The most expensive, and even outrageous of human enterprises have been military in nature. Science usually tags alongside such enterprises, but not riding shotgun. Columbus's exploration was funded by the interest of the Spanish sovereigns in search of new riches and a military position that could compete with the growing powers of Portugal and England. And although it brought map makers (cartographers), cosmographers, and geographers, scientific interest was low in his first voyages. 

It was only after that science extended its arms outwards, alongside colonization. Soon after the rediscovery--and I continue to use the term rediscovery because humans had already discovered the American continent some 15,000 years before, and northern Europeans 1000 years earlier--native Amerindians succumbed to the new colonist's diseases, enslavement, and weapons. Unfortunately, the science that came along was opportunistic and cast a heavyweight on the existence of many native species with scant documentation.

The first colonists had to eat off the land, and in many cases brought with them animals that soon became feral where they did not evolve or were not suited for ecologically, driving other native species to extinction.

Native fruit plants from an engraving in Benzoni's Historia del Mondo Novo (1563).

An interesting case is that told by father Bartolome de la Casas. In 1512, during the official exploration and conquest of Cuba by Diego Velazquez, he and his crew killed and ate thousands of Cuban macaws (Ara cubensis) in Casaharta, a town in central-northern Cuba.
The Cuban macaw has been extinct in Cuba since the 19th century but had been rare since the 18th century, when deforestation and overhunting for its beautiful feathers drove it to rarity, and later extinction. In the mid 19th century, the German naturalist Johannes Gundlach found it in the Zapata Swamp, southwestern Cuba.
A similar case has occurred to the Cuban crows (Corvus minutus and Corvus nasicus), and the Cuban ivorybill woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) to name a few.  These species had survived at least a million years of climate change, and over 5000 years of Amerindian coexistence, to become extinct during the colonization (see some of my own research on this here).

But the scientifically inclined explorers served well by documenting what they could about the lush natural richness of the Americas. Among them, Peter Martyr, a geographer, was the first historian of the New World. Others such as the Spanish Oviedo and the Italian Benzoni included detailed accounts of the native species found in the American Eden. Plants, animals, and even cryptic mythological creatures were initially described, such as the manati, a water mammal though to be a siren. Its scientific mammalian order--Sirenia--carries the idiosyncrasies of the era that brought it--through science--to world knowledge.

Engraving of a manati, a sirenian marine mammal as described by Oviedo in his
Historia General de las Indias (1547).