An original scientific and educational mission with the participation of Yannick Garcina palaeoclimatologist at CEREGE.
What can bats tell us about the history of the climate? Quite a lot, according to the researchers who met in July 2024 in Lastoursville, Gabon. As part of the Tropical Ecology Field School ECOTROP (co-organised by theGabon National Parks Agency and theMasuku Scientific and Technical University in Franceville), Yannick Garcina CEREGE research fellow specialising in palaeoclimatology and geochemistry, took part in an original scientific mission: sampling a 10,000-year-old core of bat guano.
Produced as part of the Franco-Gabonese Prehistoric Mission The aim of this expedition, entitled "Human occupation under the canopy for 20,000 years - Lastoursville in Gabon (2024-2028)", was to reconstruct the environmental and climatic evolution of the region since the Holocene.
Using sophisticated dating techniques (carbon 14) and geochemical analyses, past climate variations based on the exoskeletons of insects eaten by bats and found in the different layers of guano will be deciphered. Each layer, up to two metres deep, will thus become a direct witness to the climate, vegetation and environmental conditions over the millennia.
Discover this immersive film by Victor Ammann (Liambissi Production) :
At the same time, the team led by Geoffroy de Saulieu and Richard Oslislyis exploring archaeological sites in the Lastoursville region. Under the Youmbidi rock shelter, excavations have unearthed a potentially human tooth dating back more than 6,000 years, which could raise new questions about the ancestral human populations of this region.
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