Search results for "Cave"
showing 10 items of 606 documents
Cave bear occupation in Schwabenreith Cave, Austria, during the early last glacial: constraints from 230 Th/U‐dated speleothems
2019
The cave bear was a prominent member of the Upper Pleistocene fauna in Eurasia. While breakthroughs were recently achieved with respect to its phylogeny using ancient DNA techniques, it is still challenging to date cave bear fossils beyond the radiocarbon age range. Without an accurate and precise chronological framework, however, key questions regarding the palaeoecology cannot be addressed, such as the extent to which large climate swings during the last glacial affected the habitat and possibly even conditioned the final extinction of this mammal. Key to constraining the age of cave bear fossils older than the lower limit of radiocarbon dating is to date interlayered speleothems using 23…
Enduring Sacred Places: The Astronomical Orientation of the Iberian Cave-Sanctuary of Cueva Santa del Cabriel in Spain
2019
This paper presents the results of an archaeoastronomical study of the Iberian Iron Age cave-sanctuary of Cueva Santa del Cabriel, near the town of Mira in the province of Cuenca, Castilla-La Mancha, central Spain, together with a review of the latest archaeological and ethnographical data about the site. We found that the cave's 12 m-long access corridor is oriented precisely along the summer solstice sunset, so that the north wall of the main gallery is partially illuminated by sunlight at this time. Although the cave was in use from the Late Chalcolithic, it became an important religious centre in the Iberian period. After an apparent hiatus during the Roman and Islamic occupations, its …
The global forest above-ground biomass pool for 2010 estimated from high-resolution satellite observations
2021
Funding Information: We are thankful to the GlobBiomass project team and Frank Martin Seifert (ESA) for valuable suggestions and stimulating scientific discussions. We are thankful to Takeo Tadono (JAXA EORC), Masato Hayashi, (JAXA EORC), Kazufumi Kobayashi (RESTEC), Åke Rosenqvist (soloEO), and Josef Kellndorfer (EBD) for support with the use and interpretation of the ALOS PALSAR mosaics. Support by the CCI Land Cover project team, in particular Sophie Bontemps (UCL), is greatly acknowledged. The help from Martin Jung (MPI-BGC) in feature selection and Ulrich Weber (MPI-BGC) for data processing for the GSV-to-AGB conversions is greatly acknowledged. Forest inventory data for the validation…
Simulated European stalagmite record and its relation to a quasi-decadal climate mode
2013
Abstract. A synthetic stalagmite record for the Bunker cave is constructed using a combined climate-stalagmite modeling approach. The power spectrum of the simulated speleothem calcite δ18O record has a pronounced peak at quasi-decadal time scale. Interestingly, mixing processes in the soil and karst above the cave represent a natural low-pass filter of the speleothem climate archive. We identify a quasi-decadal mode characterized by a "tripole pattern" of sea surface temperature affecting stalagmite δ18O values. This pattern, which is well-known in literature as the quasi-decadal mode in the North Atlantic, propagates eastwards and affects western European temperature surrounding the cave.…
New insights on secondary minerals from Italian sulfuric acid caves
2018
Sulfuric acid minerals are important clues to identify the speleogenetic phases of hypogene caves. Italy hosts ~25% of the known worldwide sulfuric acid speleogenetic (SAS) systems, including the famous well-studied Frasassi, Monte Cucco, and Acquasanta Terme caves. Nevertheless, other underground environments have been analyzed, and interesting mineralogical assemblages were found associated with peculiar geomorphological features such as cupolas, replacement pockets, feeders, sulfuric notches, and sub-horizontal levels. In this paper, we focused on 15 cave systems located along the Apennine Chain, in Apulia, in Sicily, and in Sardinia, where copious SAS minerals were observed. Some of the…
Secondary minerals from salt caves in the Atacama Desert (Chile): a hyperarid and hypersaline environment with potential analogies to the Martian sub…
2017
Over the past 15 years several expeditions by French, American and especially Italian cavers have unveiled over 50 caves in the Cordillera de la Sal (Atacama Desert, Northern Chile). Many of these caves contain a variety of speleothems and minerals, some of which have rarely been observed within karst systems. Most of the secondary deposits in these caves are composed of halite, but also other halide, carbonate, sulphate, nitrate, phosphate, and silicate minerals have been found. Among the sixteen cave mineral species recognized, atacamite, darapskite, blödite, leonite, anhydrite, and especially antarcticite are worth mentioning. In one of the samples an unknown Ca-Sr-bearing chloride miner…
Effects of dating errors on nonparametric trend analyses of speleothem time series
2012
A fundamental problem in paleoclimatology is to take fully into account the various error sources when examining proxy records with quantitative methods of statistical time series analysis. Records from dated climate archives such as speleothems add extra uncertainty from the age determination to the other sources that consist in measurement and proxy errors. This paper examines three stalagmite time series of oxygen isotopic composition (δ18O) from two caves in western Germany, the series AH-1 from the Atta Cave and the series Bu1 and Bu4 from the Bunker Cave. These records carry regional information about past changes in winter precipitation and temperature. U/Th and radiocarbon dat…
Holocene climate variability in north-eastern Italy: potential influence of the NAO and solar activity recorded by speleothem data
2012
Abstract. Here we present high-resolution stable isotope and lamina thickness profiles as well as radiocarbon data for the Holocene stalagmite ER 76 from Grotta di Ernesto (north-eastern Italy), which was dated by combined U-series dating and lamina counting. ER 76 grew between 8 ka (thousands of years before 2000 AD) and today, with a hiatus from 2.6 to 0.4 ka. Data from nine meteorological stations in Trentino show a significant influence of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) on winter temperature and precipitation in the cave region. Spectral analysis of the stable isotope signals of ER 76 reveals significant peaks at periods of 110, 60–70, 40–50, 32–37 and around 25 a. Except for the …
Late glacial-postglacial North African landscape and forestmanagement : Palynological and anthracological studies in the caves of Kaf Taht el-Ghar an…
2021
This work presents the anthracological and archeopalynological results obtained within the project AGRIWESTMED (ERC AdG 230561), which has involved a comprehensive retrieval of archeobiological remains based on a systematic sampling strategy, beyond the recovery of the usual archeological materials. These surveys were conducted on three sites located in the North of Morocco: the cave of Kaf Taht-el-Ghar, 8 km southeast from Tetuan, and two caves within the El Khil complex, close to Tanger. Both plant micro- and macro-remains (charred wood) were studied through palynological and anthracological analyses, respectively.
A mitogenome sequence of an Equus hydruntinus specimen from Late Quaternary site of San Teodoro Cave (Sicily, Italy)
2020
Abstract Equus hydruntinus was a small equid that ranged from the Iberian Peninsula to Middle East. In Italy it has been considered present from the Middle Pleistocene to its extinction in the Middle-Late Holocene. E. hydruntinus shares plesiomorphic traits with other known Pleistocene equids. As a consequence, its classification has always been problematic. Genetic analyses on few fossil remains from Iran and Crimea have revealed that E. hydruntinus was more closely related to extant hemiones. To further investigate its systematic position, using target-enrichment capture and next-generation sequencing, we reconstructed a near complete mitogenome of a specimen from San Teodoro Cave from Si…