Natural Explorest the Secrets | What secrets do I have in Guizhou Shuanghe Cave?

In December 2021, a news about the panda fossils of Grand Panda 100,000 years ago in Shuanghe Cave in Guizhou, once again focused on everyone's eyes in this cave with the most complete panda fossils in the world.

In 30 years, nearly 40 big panda fossils have been found

Shuanghe Cave, Guizhou is located in Shuanghe Village, Hot Spring Town, Suiyang County, Guizhou Province. It belongs to the Dolou Mountains and is the first long hole in Asia. In addition to the panda fossils, in addition to the panda fossils, the scientific examination has also found that the mammalian fossils such as sword tooth elephants, giant cats, and rated antelopes, and new species of cave creatures. As of now, the length of its length is more than 300 kilometers and the vertical depth is more than 660 meters.

The area where Shuanghe Cave is located is a typical karst landscape, and the mountains are high. The branch hole discussed in this article was detected in 2015 and connected to the Shuanghe Cave system. It is mainly composed of two holes, with an altitude of 1073 meters and 1075 meters, respectively. The cave entrances are small, no more than 2 meters high, and no more than 3 meters wide. The local cave roads are relatively low. There is no perennial surface rivers at the bottom of the valley.

△ Sample sample samples under the cave personnel

It is understood that since 1988, the Guizhou Academy of Sciences The Institute of Mountain Resource Research has been actively organizing Chinese and foreign researchers to jointly explore the cave. It has been detected for more than 30 kilometers for more than 30 years. "At the beginning, we mainly explored the lower caves near the roads and villages. Because the cave was difficult, some cave enthusiasts or nearby villagers would also go in the event, and did not find too many fossils." Essence

"But after 2011, with the deepening of the cave, some giant panda fossils were discovered in one place where the cave personnel arrived for the first time. Persons of paleontology have not been further studied. It was not until 2019 that we started a detailed investigation into the panda fossils in the cave. "Wang Deyuan said.

At present, there are nearly 40 giant panda fossils found in Shuanghe Cave, with time span from thousands of years to hundreds of thousands of years ago.

△ A very complete panda skull fossil found in the cave

Wang Deyuan said that it was different from other cave roads in Shuanghe Cave found. Different sporadic panda individual fossils were found. On the ground on the floor of the crack -shaped well in a cracked shaft in a branch of Shuanghe Cave, at least 10 fell individuals fell. This provides excellent opportunities for us to understand the living habits of ancient pandas and research on their habitat adaptation.

There are many fossils in the cave, experts say the reason

As a "paleon kingdom", Guizhou has developed and shallowly varied sedimentary stratum development, covering more than 80% of the land here. From the beginning of the birth of creatures, many creatures inhabited and reproduced on the land of Guizhou, making Guizhou one of the important bases of paleontology and paleontology research for paleontological fossils. Shuanghe Cave, as "the longest Baiyun Rock Cave", has an excellent ecological environment in the cave area and is known as the "Karst Natural Cave Museum".

There are so many panda fossils in Shuanghe Cave, Wang Deyuan has his own speculation. According to the living habits of existing pandas, giant pandas live alone and have no habit of hibernation. There are 5 panda fossils found in Shuanghe Cave, and there are 5 caves, and some even as many as 10 in the caves. At the same time, the annual data measurement data also proves that the pandas in the cave live in different times, and most of them are accumulated after death in place, and there are not many individuals affected by external forces such as flowing water.

△ A complete giant panda bone fossil shows that it falls from the upper cave road to death. The annual annual year of the enamel uranium shows that the fossil age is more than 50,000 years.

Through the behavior of modern giant pandas, it is found that wild pandas usually choose to live in life and caves with slow slopes and caves. Although the slope of the hillside of the cave cave is large, it is generally not the best choice for panda habitats, but there is a near -horizontal extension of the platform at the entrance of the cave. Perhaps it can explain why the panda chose this cave to inhabit.

In addition, as a giant panda living alone, in addition to the female giant panda that raises the young, more cases are that they live alone. Therefore, a large panda fossil appears in a cave, which may indicate that there is a geographical environment that is very suitable for the survival of giant pandas. Many giant pandas have been reproduced in the region for generations and borrowed the hole inhabiting. Occasionally, the falling incident occurred within tens of thousands of years.

The two caves entering the cave are relatively smooth, and then there is a steep hurdle, and there is a horizontal cave below the steep hurdles. The giant panda fell behind steep, and could only move to the left or right along the horizontal cave road. There is a 8 -meter -high steep rush on the left cave road. All the giant pandas that have fallen carelessly can only move along the right path to the right, while the two are 30 meters deep. The giant panda fossil is found here.

△ In -the -in -hole situation

The temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide conditions below the well are relatively stable. The cave is high, far from human activities, and there are many wells in the cave. It is not affected by factors such as human activities, which has provided important conditions for fossil preservation so far.

is home"? Or "trap"? Still a mystery

As for why the giant panda deepen into the depths of the cave without a trace of light, it is still a mystery. From the perspective of the burial situation of the big panda fossils in the cave, basically the giant panda fossils are piled up. Although some of them are more broken, the teeth, bones, etc. are relatively concentrated, indicating that the giant panda may still be a whole when they come here, and it is rotten here. accumulation. According to the development characteristics of the cave road, it is possible to judge the flow of water and external forces to bring it into the cave. Only after rotten, the water flow formed by rodents and dripping water for some individuals has a short -distance moving effect on some individuals. For the reasons for the deep into the cave, more detailed research is needed. At present, researchers do only the following speculation: The first reason may be that the Shuanghe Cave area in the past period also lives large cats such as South China Tiger (Shuanghe Cave found that there is a complete large cat animal fossil), because large carnivorous animals The giant panda forced the giant panda to go deep into the deep part of the cave; the second possibility was that the temperature in the cold period of the last ice period decreased significantly, forcing the giant panda to choose to have a deeper position inhabiting; the third speculation was that the area belongs to the typical typical The Karst's appearance is landscape, and the runoffs of the surface are mostly remitted with cracks, falling water holes, and pits, and the surface runoffs are lacking. In the short -term extreme arid weather incident, the lack of drinking water is a major test on the survival of the giant panda, which may drive it to drive it. I have to go deep into the depths of the cave to find water.

△ This hole is a narrow crack -like cave, which found 6 giant panda individuals. The picture shows an individual with a relatively complete skull

Big panda fossils are actually more common. Guangxi, Guizhou, Jiangxi, Hainan, Hunan and other places have been found, but most of the fossils are buried in the strata and mainly a small amount of teeth. Giant panda fossils like Shuanghe Cave with a complete bone are very rare.

Wang Deyuan told the author that most of the giant panda fossils in Shuanghe Cave were discovered by the French Permanent Expert of Shuanghe Cave Science Expert Jean Potasi. "He is a person full of curiosity, and he will marked many geological phenomena, animal fossils, etc. on his cave map. However, his main work is the cave adventure and mapping. After discovering the fossils, he will tell us to do it after the fossil. Professional treatment. "At present, the number of giant panda fossils found in the Shuanghe Cave area can distinguish nearly 40 individuals.

Guizhou Shuanghe Cave discovered that the giant panda fossils of 100,000 years ago have attracted a lot of attention. Huang Wanbo, a researcher at the Institute of Ancient vertebrates and Ancient Humans of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that in the decades when their survey and study of giant panda fossils, giant panda fossils have found a large number, good degree of goodness, and long span of time and space. The river cave is second to none. The giant panda fossils of Shuanghe Cave contain extremely rich scientific connotations, such as the dwarf panda of Shuanghe Cave, the small panda of the previous life, and the evolution of the biological system of this life. So many prehistoric giant pandas buried in the same cave. In addition to natural conditions, their buried mechanisms were also fooled. In short, Guizhou Shuanghe Cave Big Panda Fossil Group will be eye -catching!

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Those things you don't know

"Our cave team, everyone's work content is different: there are research on stalagmmer's climate, to restore the environment and climate change in the area according to stalagmites; The influence of raising; some research and evolutionary research on caves; there are also research on cave biological research, etc. I am mainly doing some research on the fossils of mammals in the cave. It is also very large. From thousands of to hundreds of thousands of years, I hope that through the establishment of time sequences, it can study its evolutionary process during this time period. "Wang Deyuan told the author.

△ The cave staff transported out the sample from the hole

The cave needs to bring a lot of equipment, such as ropes, electric diamonds, vertical cave technical equipment, etc., and the cave is also dangerous. If there is a slight difference, the giant panda can fall to death, not to mention people. Wang Deyuan's cave team generally has at least three people. Everyone settled together to assist each other to complete the work of samples, camera, and samples. Three people can also guarantee that if one person is injured, one person can go back to find rescue, and the other person takes care of the injured.

The most difficult to explore the cave, they only walked for two hours for one kilometer. The mountain high roads were all bamboo, and it was also raining and fog. Everyone carried heavy equipment, around the mountain around the entrance, and returned. After all, everyone was exhausted.

"Listening to the predecessors said that 30 years ago, everyone used the most common flashlight. Later, there was a headlight for the battery. After that, the vertical cavity technology was introduced to the country, and there were more and more cave enthusiasts. The tools used during measurement from leather tape to compass to the current laser rangefinder. Now, one measurement can see the length, slope, orientation angle, and even connect the mobile phone Bluetooth for paperless measurement, which is much faster. "Wang Deyuan said.

(This article was published in "Watching Panda" Magazine in May Magazine, the field map was provided by Wang Deyuan)

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