The Kirkdale Cave palaeofauna represents the original and classic \u27warm\u27, interglacial mammalian cave deposit in Britain. Although long considered to be \u27Ipswichian\u27 in age, no previous attempts to obtain radiometric dates have been recorded. Here we report a uranium-series disequilibrium date of 121,000 ± 4000 yr BP on a flowstone capping that overlay the original bone bed. The precision of the date exceeds that obtained at any other British Interglacial cave site, and permits tentative correlation with the high precision ice core records now available

Ford, Derek C.

McFarlane, Donald A.

English

Scholarship@Claremont

Claremont CollegesScholarship @ ClaremontWM Keck Science Faculty Papers W.M. Keck Science Department4-1-1998The Age of the Kirkdale Cave PalaeofaunaDonald A. McFarlaneClaremont McKenna College; Pitzer College; Scripps CollegeDerek C. FordMcMaster UniversityThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by the W.M. Keck Science Department at Scholarship @ Claremont. It has been accepted forinclusion in WM Keck Science Faculty Papers by an authorized administrator of Scholarship @ Claremont. For more information, please contactscholarship@cuc.claremont.edu.Recommended CitationMcFarlane, D.A., and D.C. Ford. "The Age of the Kirkdale Cave Palaeofauna." Cave and Karst Science 25.1 (1998): 3-6.GB 601 A1 B7 T7 <.:~ :" ---------------------v. 25 ~\ ~O~Tl~ave and Karst Science BeRA Volume 25 r 1 April 1998 Oligocene-aged island remnants in Florida, USA Caves of Jebel Hafeet, United Arab Emirates Kirkdale Cave palaeofauna, Yorkshire, UK Wookey Hole and Pope's Grotto Limestone karst in Zambia Symposium abstracts Forum CAVE AND KARST SCIENCE Vol 25, No. I, April 1998 Transactions of the British Cave Research Association The age of the Kirkdale Cave palaeofauna Donald A McFARLANE I and Derek C FORD 2 I Joint Science Department, The Claremont Colleges, 925 North Mills Avenue, Claremont, CA 91711, USA 2 Departments of Geography and Geology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, L8S 4K 1, CANADA Abstract: The Kirkdale Cave palaeofauna represents the original and classic 'warm', interglacial mammalian cave deposit in Britain. Although long considered to be ' Ipswichian' in age, no previous attempts to obtain radiometric dates have been recorded. Here we report a uranium-series disequilibrium date of 121,000 ± 4000 yr BP on a flowstone capping that overlay the original bone bed. The precision of the date exceeds that obtained at any other British Interglacial cave site, and permits tentative correlation with the high precision ice core records now available. (Received 16 September 1997; Accepted 5 January 1998) BACKGROUND AND HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION "By the crust o/thy Stalactite floor, The post-Adamite ages I've reckoned, Summed their years, days & hours & more, And lfind it comes right to the second. " Coneybeare, 1822 [see also Figure 3J Kirkdale Cave [British National Grid Reference SE 6783 8562' 1 is an abandoned phreatic resurgence cave, 175m in length, located 58m above sea level, on the northern edge of the Vale of Pickering, north Yorkshire. The cave first came to public attention in June 1821, when it was intersected by a quarrying operation on the east bank of the Hodge Beck. Before that time, the entrance had been completely choked and presented no indications of its existence (Young, 1823; Fig.I). Fortuitously, the local surgeon, John Harrison, noticed teeth and bone in road aggregate and traced the source to the -15-30cm-deep layer of sediment on the cave floor. Over the next four months, a diverse group of local naturalists excavated in the cave, amassing a large collection of mammalian remains of unusual aspect. The existence of hyaena, hippopotamus, 'tiger', and other decidedly atypical Yorkshire fauna marked this discovery as one of some importance, and in November 1821 William Buckland (1784-1856), the first Professor of Geology at Oxford and later Dean of Westminster, was invited to visit the cave. a The national grid reference is reported inaccurately in Boylan, 1981. Figure 1. Kirkdale Cave and the Hodge Beck Quarry as they appeared in late 1821, at the time of Buckland's visit. From Buckland, 1823. Buckland was profoundly influenced by his excavations at Kirkdale, and began a series of cave visits in Britain and Germany that culminated in his Re/iquiae Diluvianae (Buckland, 1823), a volume of seminal importance to scientific speleology, the understanding of late Quaternary extinctions, and the progress of Natural Theology. Buckland's work and philosophy have been documented in some detail by North (1942) and Boylan (1967). The very large number of specimens collected from Kirkdale Cave came to be widely dispersed amongst a dozen museums. Tragically, those in the collections of Royal College of Surgeons and the museums of Bristol and Hull were subsequently destroyed during the hostilities of the Second World War. Boylan (1981) traced some 1,250 remaining specimens and provided a thorough revision of their taxonomic representation. Most 'notably, Boylan resolved the apparently enigmatic concurrence of a 'warm' fauna (eg, Hippopotamus) with 'cold' fauna (such as the woolly rhinoceros, Coelodonta) by demonstrating that the latter were erroneous identifications. The Kirkdale fauna is now considered to be a classic example of an 'Ipswichian' warm interglacial mammalian assemblage, many other examples of which are known from epigean sites and are assigned to Pollen Zone IpIIb (Stuart, 1976). These faunas are characterised by the presence of hippopotamus (Hippopotamus), rhinoceros (Dicero-rhinus), hyaena (Crocuta), lion (Panthera leo) and straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon), and are often referred to collectively as the 'hippopotamus' fauna, Unfortunately, correlation of either the : ___ "~"1r .... j7\r-:,,'-. .. ,,_,. c. /i r . .I " .'IL.I\; . ! , f' \~ (. \~' ; / £ J::.li -~ , ~ (\ i. \) ' ! " ~ P I( "t )! ~0-__ 1) \~.- _:'~~_ -'~.- -~ .• _ • • .f,-:.. __ ~ _ ':...:. _ ' " j \. . A L. ~- " ~~~:~~~;:;';:~_:':' ''' ~: 4f;'d .. 'j( ~tt'" . ., -;"';::I'i.·(<ll·(, . 3 location ___ --Figure 2. Survey of the entrance area of Kirkdale Cave, modified from the original in Buckland (1823) ---- .......... -_ .... 1995 Quarry face, 1821 ..... ---original quarry face N t 5 metres _________________________ ---l 'Ipswichian' or Zone IpIIb with the absolute time scale or the marine isotope record has been controversial (Gascoyne et ai, 1981; Stuart 1976), with Sutcliffe (1976) arguing that Ipswichian faunas represent unresolved components from several discrete temperate intervals. The availability of high resolution records from Greenland ice cores (GRIP, 1993; Grootes et ai, 1993) and the Lac du Bouchet (France) pollen sequence (Field et ai, 1994), together with improved precision in the dating of cave deposits, now provides new insight into these ideas. DISCUSSION OF THE CURRENT WORK Despite the great historical signiticance of the Kirkdale fauna, the site has never been dated radiometrically. In an attempt to effect closure on the 175 year saga of Kirkdale Cave, we undertook a uranium series disequilibrium analysis of remnants of the original flowstone floor, which both capped the bone-bearing sediment, and in some cases incorporated the bones that had their upper ends, " ... projecting like legs of pigeons through pie-crust..." (Buckland, 1823:12). Subsequent to Buckland's work, quarrying removed a further 15-20m of the cave. Nevertheless, during a visit in 1995, we were able to locate remnants of the original calcite floor overlying pockets of undisturbed sediment (Fig. 2). A 47g sample of yellow flowstone with clay-filled vugs was removed and assayed by standard uranium-series disequilibrium alpha counting methods (Ivanovitch and Harmon, 1992), yielding an age of 121.4 +4.8 / -4.6kyr BP. The analysis was very satisfactory, with a high uranium content complemented by low amounts of detrital thorium (Table 1), a situation unusual in a cave entrance faunal deposit. The age of the Kirkdale Cave flowstone falls within marine isotope stage (MIS) 5e, which spans the interval 115-132kyr BP and represents the Last (or Eemian) Interglacial (sensu Mangerud et ai, 1979) of continental Europe. The flowstone floor that capped the bone-bearing sediment clearly postdates the episode of hyaena occupation. However, the partial incorporation of bones implies that the flowstone was l E Sample Code DAM 95-34 --4 Uranium 234U/mU 234U/23&U at 2Jorh/234U content deposition 0.675 ppm 1.448 \.63 ± 0.035 0.706 Calculated Age = 121,400 + 4,800 / - 4,600 yrs BP. emplaced relatively quickly after the site was abandoned by these animals. Buckland's contemporary cross section of the cave stratigraphy (Fig. 1) demonstrates that in some areas flowstone actually underlay the bone deposits. It is interesting to speculate that the original Kirkdale Cave deposit may have evidenced two episodes of climatic optima within MIS 5e, producing the upper and lower flowstones respectively. Such an interpretation is consistent with a variety of recent evidence for rapid climate reversals during MIS 5e (Thouveny e/ ai, 1994; Field e/ ai, 1994; Hillaire-Marcel et ai, 1996). The date for the Kirkdale Cave flowstone floor is statistically indistinguishable flOm the age of the flowstone that caps the Lower Cave Earth of Victoria Cave, Yorkshire (Gascoyne et ai, 1981), the remarkable dwarf deer deposit of Belle Hogue Cave, Jersey, (Lister, 1989), and the 'Sandy Cave Earth' fauna of Bacon Hole, Wales (Stringer et ai, 1986) - all classic 'Ipswichian' hippopotamus-fauna sites. In reviewing the Bacon Hole sequence, Stringer et al (1986) brought attention to the apparently novel continuance of the characteristic interglacial mammals Palaeolo:xodon and Dicerorhinus into the "early Devensian" (glacial), an interpretation based on the dating of the 'Upper Cave Earth', which contains these taxa together with Microtus oeconomus, the northern vole (a 'cold' form). However, the age of the Bacon Hole 'Upper Cave Earth', assumed by Stringer e/ al (1986) to postdate the cold 'wolverine' deposit at Stump Cross Caverns, Yorkshire (83 ± 6kyr BP; Sutcliffe et aI, 1985), is poorly constrained radiometrically. The Bacon Hole 'Upper Cave Earth' is not dated directly, but rather by an overlying stalagmite layer, which at 81 ± 18kyr BP places its 95% confidence limits within late MIS 5e time at approximately 115kyr BP, providing only a minimum age for the underlying fauna. Certainly, it cannot be considered significantly younger than the Devensian Stump Cross fauna. An alternative interpretation is to consider that the tenure of the Bacon Hole interglacial fauna falls entirely within MIS 5e, with the anomalous M. oeconomus marking one of the dramatic climatic deteriorations within later MIS 5e (GRIP members, 1993; Field e/ ai, 2JOThf2J2Th 51 Table I. Uranium-series dating results 011 the Kirkdale Cave flows/one. I' h ir cI sl 51 B t( I( SI il d c F F a tI SI ( E E I< \ r g r of al se Ie Iy le Jf er a ie Iy er Ie :r, ~s la 5) Ie IS Ie er :r, et SS Iy Dt :1 at Ie Iy Ie Ie ic !/. 1994; Thouveny, 1994; Johnsen et ai, 1995), and the classic Zone IpUb hippopotamus fauna correlating to the 5e5 climatic optimum. This interpretation supports arguments for the complexity of , Ipswich ian' climate change (Stringer et ai, 1986; Gordon, et aI, 1989), albeit spanning a much shorter time interval than these authors have supposed. Stuart (1983) reported 14 'Ipswichian' vertebrate cave sites in Britain. All of these were originally discovered and excavated in the 19th century or first half of the 20th century, before radiometric dating techniques were developed. Several of these sites were subsequently lost to quarrying, although modem re-excavations of the remaining sites have yielded a bounty of information, the potential value of 'new' interglacial vertebrate cave sites cannot be overstated. Such discoveries, if they are to be made, will depend on the vigilance of the caving community. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Fieldwork at Kirkdale Cave was facilitated by Richard E. Gledhill. Clare Flemming provided assistance with the figures, and much critical evaluation and improvement of the manuscript. Uranium-series dating was performed at the McMaster University Speleothem Laboratory, Hamilton, Canada, supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. REFERENCES Boylan, P J, 1967. Dean William Buckland, 1784-1856. A pioneer in cave science. Studies in Speleology. Vol. 1(5),237-253. Boylan, P J, 1981. A new revision of the Pleistocene mammal fauna of Kirkdale Cave, Yorkshire. Proceeding of the Yorkshire Geological Society. VoL 43,253-280. Buckland, W, 1823. Reliquiae Diluvianae; or, observations on the organiC remains contained in caves. fissures. and diluvial gravel. and on other geological phenomena. attesting the action of an universal deluge. viii + 303 pp. Murray, London. Figure 3. Coneybeare's satirical cartoon of Buckland in Kirkdale Cave. From Coneybeare, 1822. Coneybeare, W, 1822. On the hyaena's den at Kirkdale, near Kirby Moorside in Yorkshire. discovered in A.D. /821. Privately circulated broadsheet, reproduced in Rudwick, M J S, 1992, Scenes from Deep Time. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. 280 pp. Field, M H, Huntley, B and Muller, H, 1994. Eemian climate fluctuations observed in a European pollen record. Nature, Vol. 371, 779-783. Gascoyne, M, Currant, A P and Lord, T C, 1981. Ipswichian fauna of Victoria Cave and the marine paleoclimate record. Nature, Vol. 294, 652-654. Gordon, 0, Smart, P L, Ford, 0 C, Andrews, J N, Atkinson, T C, Rowe, P J and Christopher, N S J, 1989. Dating of late Pleistocene Interglacial and Interstadial periods in the United Kingdom from speleothem growth frequencies. Quaternary Research, Vol. 31, 14-26. GRJP members, 1993. Climate instabil ity during the last intergl acial period recorded in the GRJP ice core. Nature, Vol. 364, 203-207. Grootes, P M, Stuvier, M, White, J W C, Johnsen, S J and Jouzel J. 1993. Comparison of oxygen isotope records from the GISP2 and GRJP Greenland ice cores. Nature, Vol. 366, 552-554. Hillaire-Marcel, C, Gariepy, C, Ghaleb, B, Goy, J-L, Zazo, C and Barcelo, J C, 1996. U-series measurements in Tyrhennian deposits from Mallorca - further evidence for two last-interglacial high sea-levels in the Balearic islands. Quaternary Science Reviews, Vol. 15, 53-62. Ivanovitch, M and Harmon, R S, 1992. Uranium-series disequilibrium: Applications t'o Earth. Marine and Environmental Sciences. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 910 pp. Johnsen, S J, Clausen, H B, Dansgaard, W, Gundestrup, N S, Hammer, C U and Tauber, H, 1995. The Eem stable isotope record along the GRJP ice core and its interpretation. Quaternary Research, Vol. 43, 117-124. Lister, A M, 1989. Rapid dwarfing of red deer on Jersey in the Channel Islands. Nature, VoL 342, 539-542. Mangerud, J, Sonstegaard, E and Sejrup, H P, 1979. Correlation of the Eemian (Interglacial) stage and the deep sea oxygen-isotope stratigraphy. Natllre. Vol. 277, 189-192. 5 North, F J, 1942. Paviland Cave, the 'Red lady', the Deluge, and William Buckland. Annals of SCience, Vol. 5(2),91-128. Stringer, C B, Currant, A P, Schwarcz, H P and Collcutt, S N, 1986. Age of the Pleistocene faunas from Bacon Hole, Wales. Nature, Vol. 320, 59-62. Stuart, A J, 1976. The history of the mammalian fauna during the Ipswichianl Last Interglacial in England. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (London), B280, 295-312. Stuart, A J, 1983. Pleistocene bone caves in Britain and Ireland. A short review. Studies in Speleology, Vol. 4, 9-36. Sutcliffe, A J, 1976. The British glaciallinterglacial sequence: reply to Professor R.G. West. Quaternary Newsletter, Vol. 18, 1-7. 6 Sutcliffe, A J, Lord,> T C, Hanlnon, R S, Ivanovitch, M, Rae, A and Hess, J W, 1985. Wolverine in Northern England at about 83,000 yrs BP; faunal evidence for climatic change during isotope stage 5. Quaternary Research, Vol. 24, 73-86. Thouveny, N, Beaulieu, J-L, Bonifay, E, Creer, K M, Gulot, J, Icole, M, Johnsen, S, Jouzel, J, Reille, M, Williams, T and Williamson, D, 1994. Climate variability in Europe over the past 140 kyr deduced from rock magnetism. Nature, Vol. 371, 503-506. Young, A M, 1823. On the fossil remains of Quadrupeds, etc., discovered in the cavern at Kirkdale, in Yorkshire, and in other cavities or seams in limestone rocks. Memoirs of the Wernerian Natural History Society, Vol. 5, 171-183. C T I I I c r. r C f \ s c c e I , 

The Age of the Kirkdale Cave Palaeofauna

Keck Graduate Institute

Claremont Colleges
Scholarship @ Claremont
WM Keck Science Faculty Papers W.M. Keck Science Department
4-1-1998
The Age of the Kirkdale Cave Palaeofauna
Donald A. McFarlane
Claremont McKenna College; Pitzer College; Scripps College
Derek C. Ford
McMaster University
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the W.M. Keck Science Department at Scholarship @ Claremont. It has been accepted for
inclusion in WM Keck Science Faculty Papers by an authorized administrator of Scholarship @ Claremont. For more information, please contact
scholarship@cuc.claremont.edu.
Recommended Citation
McFarlane, D.A., and D.C. Ford. "The Age of the Kirkdale Cave Palaeofauna." Cave and Karst Science 25.1 (1998): 3-6.
GB 
601 
A1 
B7 
T7 <.:~ :" ---------------------
v. 25 ~\ 
~O~Tl~ave and 
Karst Science BeRA 
Volume 25 r 1 April 1998 
Oligocene-aged island remnants in Florida, USA 
Caves of Jebel Hafeet, United Arab Emirates 
Kirkdale Cave palaeofauna, Yorkshire, UK 
Wookey Hole and Pope's Grotto 
Limestone karst in Zambia 
Symposium abstracts 
Forum 
CAVE AND KARST SCIENCE Vol 25, No. I, April 1998 
Transactions of the British Cave Research Association 
The age of the Kirkdale Cave palaeofauna 
Donald A McFARLANE I and Derek C FORD 2 
I Joint Science Department, The Claremont Colleges, 925 North Mills Avenue, Claremont, CA 91711, 
USA 
2 Departments of Geography and Geology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, L8S 4K 1, 
CANADA 
Abstract: The Kirkdale Cave palaeofauna represents the original and classic 'warm', interglacial 
mammalian cave deposit in Britain. Although long considered to be ' Ipswichian' in age, no previous 
attempts to obtain radiometric dates have been recorded. Here we report a uranium-series disequilibrium 
date of 121,000 ± 4000 yr BP on a flowstone capping that overlay the original bone bed. The precision of 
the date exceeds that obtained at any other British Interglacial cave site, and permits tentative correlation 
with the high precision ice core records now available. 
(Received 16 September 1997; Accepted 5 January 1998) 
BACKGROUND AND HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 
"By the crust o/thy Stalactite floor, 
The post-Adamite ages I've reckoned, 
Summed their years, days & hours & more, 
And lfind it comes right to the second. " 
Coneybeare, 1822 [see also Figure 3J 
Kirkdale Cave [British National Grid Reference SE 6783 8562' 1 is an 
abandoned phreatic resurgence cave, 175m in length, located 58m 
above sea level, on the northern edge of the Vale of Pickering, north 
Yorkshire. The cave first came to public attention in June 1821, when 
it was intersected by a quarrying operation on the east bank of the 
Hodge Beck. Before that time, the entrance had been completely 
choked and presented no indications of its existence (Young, 1823; 
Fig.I). Fortuitously, the local surgeon, John Harrison, noticed teeth 
and bone in road aggregate and traced the source to the -15-30cm-deep 
layer of sediment on the cave floor. Over the next four months, a 
diverse group of local naturalists excavated in the cave, amassing a 
large collection of mammalian remains of unusual aspect. The 
existence of hyaena, hippopotamus, 'tiger', and other decidedly 
atypical Yorkshire fauna marked this discovery as one of some 
importance, and in November 1821 William Buckland (1784-1856), 
the first Professor of Geology at Oxford and later Dean of 
Westminster, was invited to visit the cave. 
a The national grid reference is reported inaccurately in Boylan, 
1981. 
Figure 1. Kirkdale Cave and 
the Hodge Beck Quarry as 
they appeared in late 1821, 
at the time of Buckland's 
visit. 
From Buckland, 1823. 
Buckland was profoundly influenced by his excavations at Kirkdale, 
and began a series of cave visits in Britain and Germany that 
culminated in his Re/iquiae Diluvianae (Buckland, 1823), a volume of 
seminal importance to scientific speleology, the understanding of late 
Quaternary extinctions, and the progress of Natural Theology. 
Buckland's work and philosophy have been documented in some detail 
by North (1942) and Boylan (1967). The very large number of 
specimens collected from Kirkdale Cave came to be widely dispersed 
amongst a dozen museums. Tragically, those in the collections of 
Royal College of Surgeons and the museums of Bristol and Hull were 
subsequently destroyed during the hostilities of the Second World 
War. Boylan (1981) traced some 1,250 remaining specimens and 
provided a thorough revision of their taxonomic representation. Most 
'notably, Boylan resolved the apparently enigmatic concurrence of a 
'warm' fauna (eg, Hippopotamus) with 'cold' fauna (such as the 
woolly rhinoceros, Coelodonta) by demonstrating that the latter were 
erroneous identifications. 
The Kirkdale fauna is now considered to be a classic example of an 
'Ipswichian' warm interglacial mammalian assemblage, many other 
examples of which are known from epigean sites and are assigned to 
Pollen Zone IpIIb (Stuart, 1976). These faunas are characterised by the 
presence of hippopotamus (Hippopotamus), rhinoceros (Dicero-
rhinus), hyaena (Crocuta), lion (Panthera leo) and straight-tusked 
elephant (Palaeoloxodon), and are often referred to collectively as the 
'hippopotamus' fauna, Unfortunately, correlation of either the 
: ___ "~"1r .... j7\r-:,,'-. .. ,,_,. c. 
/i r . .I " 
.'IL.I\; . ! , f' \~ 
(. \~' ; / £ J::.li -~ , 
~ (\ i. \) ' ! " 
~ P I( 
"t )! ~0-__ 1) 
\~.- _:'~~_ -'~.- -~ .• _ • • .f,-:.. __ ~ _ ':...:. _ ' " 
j \. . A 
L. ~- " ~~~:~~~;:;';:~_:':' ''' ~: 
4f;'d 
.. 'j( ~tt'" . ., -;"';::I'i.·(<ll·(, . 
3 
location ___ 
--
Figure 2. Survey of the entrance area of 
Kirkdale Cave, modified from the original 
in Buckland (1823) 
---- .......... -_ .... 
1995 
Quarry face, 1821 
..... 
---
original quarry face 
N 
t 5 metres 
_________________________ ---l 
'Ipswichian' or Zone IpIIb with the absolute time scale or the marine 
isotope record has been controversial (Gascoyne et ai, 1981; Stuart 
1976), with Sutcliffe (1976) arguing that Ipswichian faunas represent 
unresolved components from several discrete temperate intervals. The 
availability of high resolution records from Greenland ice cores (GRIP, 
1993; Grootes et ai, 1993) and the Lac du Bouchet (France) pollen 
sequence (Field et ai, 1994), together with improved precision in the 
dating of cave deposits, now provides new insight into these ideas. 
DISCUSSION OF THE CURRENT WORK 
Despite the great historical signiticance of the Kirkdale fauna, the site 
has never been dated radiometrically. In an attempt to effect closure on 
the 175 year saga of Kirkdale Cave, we undertook a uranium series 
disequilibrium analysis of remnants of the original flowstone floor, 
which both capped the bone-bearing sediment, and in some cases 
incorporated the bones that had their upper ends, " ... projecting like 
legs of pigeons through pie-crust..." (Buckland, 1823:12). Subsequent 
to Buckland's work, quarrying removed a further 15-20m of the cave. 
Nevertheless, during a visit in 1995, we were able to locate remnants of 
the original calcite floor overlying pockets of undisturbed sediment 
(Fig. 2). A 47g sample of yellow flowstone with clay-filled vugs was 
removed and assayed by standard uranium-series disequilibrium alpha 
counting methods (Ivanovitch and Harmon, 1992), yielding an age of 
121.4 +4.8 / -4.6kyr BP. The analysis was very satisfactory, with a 
high uranium content complemented by low amounts of detrital 
thorium (Table 1), a situation unusual in a cave entrance faunal 
deposit. 
The age of the Kirkdale Cave flowstone falls within marine isotope 
stage (MIS) 5e, which spans the interval 115-132kyr BP and represents 
the Last (or Eemian) Interglacial (sensu Mangerud et ai, 1979) of 
continental Europe. The flowstone floor that capped the bone-bearing 
sediment clearly postdates the episode of hyaena occupation. However, 
the partial incorporation of bones implies that the flowstone was 
l 
E 
Sample 
Code 
DAM 95-34 
--
4 
Uranium 234U/mU 234U/23&U at 2Jorh/234U 
content deposition 
0.675 ppm 1.448 \.63 ± 0.035 0.706 
Calculated Age = 121,400 + 4,800 / - 4,600 yrs BP. 
emplaced relatively quickly after the site was abandoned by these 
animals. Buckland's contemporary cross section of the cave 
stratigraphy (Fig. 1) demonstrates that in some areas flowstone actually 
underlay the bone deposits. It is interesting to speculate that the 
original Kirkdale Cave deposit may have evidenced two episodes of 
climatic optima within MIS 5e, producing the upper and lower 
flowstones respectively. Such an interpretation is consistent with a 
variety of recent evidence for rapid climate reversals during MIS 5e 
(Thouveny e/ ai, 1994; Field e/ ai, 1994; Hillaire-Marcel et ai, 1996). 
The date for the Kirkdale Cave flowstone floor is statistically 
indistinguishable flOm the age of the flowstone that caps the Lower 
Cave Earth of Victoria Cave, Yorkshire (Gascoyne et ai, 1981), the 
remarkable dwarf deer deposit of Belle Hogue Cave, Jersey, (Lister, 
1989), and the 'Sandy Cave Earth' fauna of Bacon Hole, Wales 
(Stringer et ai, 1986) - all classic 'Ipswichian' hippopotamus-fauna 
sites. In reviewing the Bacon Hole sequence, Stringer et al (1986) 
brought attention to the apparently novel continuance of the 
characteristic interglacial mammals Palaeolo:xodon and Dicerorhinus 
into the "early Devensian" (glacial), an interpretation based on the 
dating of the 'Upper Cave Earth', which contains these taxa together 
with Microtus oeconomus, the northern vole (a 'cold' form). However, 
the age of the Bacon Hole 'Upper Cave Earth', assumed by Stringer e/ 
al (1986) to postdate the cold 'wolverine' deposit at Stump Cross 
Caverns, Yorkshire (83 ± 6kyr BP; Sutcliffe et aI, 1985), is poorly 
constrained radiometrically. The Bacon Hole 'Upper Cave Earth' is not 
dated directly, but rather by an overlying stalagmite layer, which at 81 
± 18kyr BP places its 95% confidence limits within late MIS 5e time at 
approximately 115kyr BP, providing only a minimum age for the 
underlying fauna. Certainly, it cannot be considered significantly 
younger than the Devensian Stump Cross fauna. 
An alternative interpretation is to consider that the tenure of the 
Bacon Hole interglacial fauna falls entirely within MIS 5e, with the 
anomalous M. oeconomus marking one of the dramatic climatic 
deteriorations within later MIS 5e (GRIP members, 1993; Field e/ ai, 
2JOThf2J2Th 
51 
Table I. Uranium-series dating results 011 the 
Kirkdale Cave flows/one. 
I' 
h 
ir 
cI 
sl 
51 
B 
t( 
I( 
SI 
il 
d 
c 
F 
F 
a 
tI 
SI 
( 
E 
E 
I< 
\ 
r 
g 
r 
of 
al 
se 
Ie 
Iy 
le 
Jf 
er 
a 
ie 
Iy 
er 
Ie 
:r, 
~s 
la 
5) 
Ie 
IS 
Ie 
er 
:r, 
et 
SS 
Iy 
Dt 
:1 
at 
Ie 
Iy 
Ie 
Ie 
ic 
!/. 
1994; Thouveny, 1994; Johnsen et ai, 1995), and the classic Zone IpUb 
hippopotamus fauna correlating to the 5e5 climatic optimum. This 
interpretation supports arguments for the complexity of , Ipswich ian' 
climate change (Stringer et ai, 1986; Gordon, et aI, 1989), albeit 
spanning a much shorter time interval than these authors have 
supposed. 
Stuart (1983) reported 14 'Ipswichian' vertebrate cave sites in 
Britain. All of these were originally discovered and excavated in the 
19th century or first half of the 20th century, before radiometric dating 
techniques were developed. Several of these sites were subsequently 
lost to quarrying, although modem re-excavations of the remaining 
sites have yielded a bounty of information, the potential value of 'new' 
interglacial vertebrate cave sites cannot be overstated. Such 
discoveries, if they are to be made, will depend on the vigilance of the 
caving community. 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
Fieldwork at Kirkdale Cave was facilitated by Richard E. Gledhill. Clare 
Flemming provided assistance with the figures, and much critical evaluation 
and improvement of the manuscript. Uranium-series dating was performed at 
the McMaster University Speleothem Laboratory, Hamilton, Canada, 
supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of 
Canada. 
REFERENCES 
Boylan, P J, 1967. Dean William Buckland, 1784-1856. A pioneer in cave 
science. Studies in Speleology. Vol. 1(5),237-253. 
Boylan, P J, 1981. A new revision of the Pleistocene mammal fauna of 
Kirkdale Cave, Yorkshire. Proceeding of the Yorkshire Geological Society. 
VoL 43,253-280. 
Buckland, W, 1823. Reliquiae Diluvianae; or, observations on the organiC 
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The Age of the Kirkdale Cave Palaeofauna

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