– L. barriquand
Lionel Barriquand is a doctoral student at the EDYTEM laboratory at the University of Savoie Mont Blanc, he studies this phenomenon of biocorrosion.
It is necessary to imagine that in the past, there were very large quantities of bats which occupied the caves, It is necessary to take as a reference certainly the Neolithic where there were populations which were comparable to what we can see today in Bulgaria, for example, where swarms can reach 40 to 60,000 individuals.
In the Aven d’Orgnac we have been able to date certain guanos which are several thousand years old and we realize that everywhere the concretions in the upper rooms are very altered. We have remains of stalagmites which measured 40 cm in diameter and which today are simply small stumps of 5 to 6 cm.
We have an important environmental archive. In limestone areas where there are caves, karst areas, there is very little data on the evolution of vegetation. The conservation of pollens is indeed difficult in these places, by looking in the guano for the pollens preserved and by multiplying the samples in different caves, we hope to be able to accumulate data to see all the evolution of the vegetation.
LINKS TO GO FURTHER:
HAL archives-ouvertes.fr
academia.edu
Aven d’Orgnac
A VIDEO WITH PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY BY LIONEL BARRIQUAND: