Vertebrate palaeontology from selected pleistocene cave sites in Perak and Selangor, Peninsular Malaysia / Yasamin Kh. Ibrahim

Vertebrate fossils consisting of teeth and bones of large mammals from six limestone caves in Lenggong Valley, Perak and Batu Caves, Selangor, in Peninsular Malaysia are reported. This is the first detailed systematic study of a large number of vertebrate fossils found in this country. Samples of the matrix hosting the fossils indicated a Middle Pleistocene age of 500 ka for the Lenggong Valley site and a Late Pleistocene range of 66 - 33 ka for the Batu Caves site by using both the thermoluminescence (TL) and optically-stimulated luminescence (OSL) methods that are applied for the first time in Peninsular Malaysia and supported by the corresponding use of the U-series method. The fauna composition is particularly interesting because of the discovery of taxa which had never before recorded in Peninsular Malaysia such as Orangutan (Pongo sp.), or any other country in the Sundaic subregion such as Asiatic Black Bear (Ursus thibetanus). Other species that had not been recorded before in any cave in Peninsula Malaysia found are Hystrix brachyura, Atherurus macrourus, Viverra tangalunga, Panthera tigris, Sus barbatus, and Dicerorhinus sumatrensis. This new data from Peninsular Malaysia fills an important gap in the palaeobiogeographic distribution of fossil fauna in the region and allows for new biochronological and paleogeographical correlations between the Indochinese province in the north and the Sundaic province in the south. It also modifies the geographical distributions of some of the Southeast Asia fauna by extending the ranges of northern taxa further southwards. The fauna analysis supports the hypothesis of a migration route from south China to the Indonesia islands and inversely across Peninsular Malaysia by the land bridge connections between the exposed Sundaland block during the Middle and Late Pleistocene when the sea level was low.The high diversity and new fauna collected from the caves studied together with the important chronological analysis of the samples from Badak Cave C in Lenggong Valley, Perak of 500 ka makes it one of the few oldest dated sites known from the Sundaic province making this Malaysia fauna a good reference for the fossil study of such fauna in Southeast Asia